Books published by Vintage Publishing

Black navigates life alongside the Los Angeles River, 'iridescent in its concrete sleeve', enlisting his friends - Iggy, the beautiful tattoo artist who has beguiled Hollywood's elite, and Bomboy, a wealthy Rwandan butcher - as he confronts his past and struggles to find his place in the world.

The author examines every aspect of Wolsey's career: foreign policy, Church and State, law and order, social policy, relations with the Crown, with Parliament and the nobility. He gives the reader a very different Wolsey from the caricature of tradition.

Through their eyes we see the intensely Catholic society of their youth being transformed into the vibrant, modern Ireland of today. Both are marvellous talkers, so combined with Roddy Doyle's legendary skill in illuminating ordinary experience, Rory & Ita makes for a book of tremendous warmth and humanity.

A collection of essays that examine the relations between the literary and the mortuary arts. They explore the distance between birth and death, the condition of the human being and the state of ceasing to be in a world that seeks to define human experience in retail, high-tech or pop-psyche terms.

From the beginning Oliver Walzer is a natural - at ping-pong. At sex he is not so adept, but with tuition from Sheeny Waxman, fellow member of the Akiva Social Club Table Tennis Team and stalwart of the Kardomah coffee bar, his game improves. Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

A collection of essays communicating the problems of reading and writing biography. The title explores the relationship between biography and fiction.

Weather, hazards, poor coordination, erratic biorhythms, hangovers, an unruly mind and statistical improbability - these are just a few of the obstacles to hitting a pure golf shot. Che Guevara, Alice Cooper, Dennis Hopper, and Tiger Woods have all struggled with the above to a greater or lesser degree.

Their SecretJoe and Joan Castleman are en route to Helsinki. Joe is thinking about the prestigious literary prize he will receive there, while Joan is plotting how to leave him. For too long she has played the role of supportive wife, turning a blind eye to his misdemeanours, whilst quietly being the keystone of his success.

A gun is pointed at 21-year-old Ellis as she walks through a New York park. But when Ellis accompanies her mother, a nurse, on a mission in the Philippines, she finds the life - even if held up - cannot be held back, and neither, finally, can she.

In Vintage Living Texts teachers and students will find the essential guide to the works of Ian McEwan. Vintage Living Texts is unique in that it offers an in-depth interview with Ian McEwan, relating specifically to the texts under discussion.

In the small Mississippi town of Banes in 1938, time passes slowly and the town's inhabitants follow the same daily rhythm as they have done for years.

Uma, the plain, spinster daughter of a close-knit Indian family, is trapped at home, smothered by her overbearing parents and their traditions, unlike her ambitious younger sister Aruna, who brings off a 'good' marriage, and brother Arun, the disappointing son and heir who is studying in America.

Born in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike.

A funny chronicle of a family coming apart at the seams, and of a young girl learning how to survive. This book charts the girl's progress as she navigates from childhood to the brink of womanhood, picking her way through the tragedies and absurdities of everyday life in a family which is rocked by divorce and disaster.

To the family living in the shabby, dusty house in Delhi, Tara's visit brings a sharp reminder of life outside tradition. Looking at both the cruelty and beauty of family life and the harshness of India's modern history, Clear Light of Day brilliantly evokes the painful process of confronting and healing old wounds.

'If men could see us as we really are, they would be amazed', wrote Charlotte Bronte, the outwardly conventional parson's daughter who had rarely met any men beyond those of the church or classroom by the time Jane Eyre was published in 1847.

The mysterious, enigmatic Seraphin Monge, having avenged the horrific murder of his family, has vanished as abruptly as he appeared. His brief sojourn in the village of his birth has touched the lives of the villagers, and he is much mourned by the women who claim to have been in love with him. But is Seraphin dead or alive?

In these 17 stories, Sam Shepherd taps the same wellspring that has made him one of America's most acclaimed playwrights: sex and regret; the yearning for a frontier that has been subdivided out of existence and the anxious gulf that separates men and women.

Contributors: John Polkinghorne, Martin Rees, John Barrow, Susan Blackmore, Susan Greenfield, Stephen LaBerge, Robert Plomin, Geoffrey Miller, Michael Rutter, Janet Radcliffe Richards, David M Buss, Dolf Zillmann, Mary Warnock, John Sulston, Ronald Melzack, Brian Heap, Michael Ruse, Colin Pillinger, John Leslie and Steven Rose.

A terrifying ghost story by the bestselling author of The Woman in Black. One dark and rainy night, Sir James Monmouth returns to London after years spent travelling alone.

An exploration of time and place in which Fortey peels away the top layer of the land to reveal the hidden landscape - the rocks which contain the story of distant events. We travel with him as our guide throughout the British Isles and as the rocks change we learn to read the clues they contain.

Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, READING IN THE DARK is one of the finest books about growing up - in Ireland or anywhere - that has ever been written.

The Young Visiters or Mr Salteena's Plan is a comic masterpiece that has delighted generations of readers since it was first published in 1919. The BBC1 adaptation of the novel, starring Jim Broadbent as Mr Salteena, was originally broadcast in 2003.

Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off to buy sweets. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, Helga Joner, her mother, starts to worry. As the family goes out looking for Ida, Helga's worst nightmare becomes reality, and they contact the police. Ida Joner seems to have vanished without a trace.

This, she thinks, is the best sex she's ever had.So the story of Kelly + Victor progresses, through two mirror-image narratives: a story of the growth and spiralling intensity of sexual obsession, traced to its inevitable, devastating conclusion.

This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country, and the first volume in Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson, hailed as `the greatest biography of our era'.

Charles Greville (1794-1865) made his first occasional diary entries in 1814, but the diary only became a regular habit in the mid-1820s, continuing with occasional breaks, about which he is self-reproachful, through the reigns of George IV, William IV and Victoria.

A collection of verse by the author of "Summer Show" and "Angel". Poems on British activity in Ireland through the ages punctuate a series of love poems.

Flat on his front, binoculars to his eyes, alone at dusk, Dick makes a remarkable discovery: two rare birds, never before seen in the British Isles.

Nancy Blackett, the terror of the seas, has finally met a real pirate - the tiny, pistol-carrying Missee Lee, who has rescued them after their shipwreck off the coast of China. The only trouble is she wants to keep them... forever.