Books published by Vintage Publishing

Frederica is the spirited heroine of three earlier Byatt novels. In this, the concluding volume of the quartet, she falls almost by accident into a career in television in London, while tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life, and those of the people she loves.

The life of Paul Metzger, a writer, is in disrepair. Mid-thirties, divorced, underachieving. A mid-winter Sunday in New York sees him traversing the city to visit three people: an elder half-brother; a disgraced, dying father; and, an ex-wife whom Paul still loves. But it is a fourth, unplanned encounter that changes more than one life forever.

This is ultimately a story about being in possession of your own life. Zoroastrian myth, Sufism, Communism and Freud are woven together to create a work of psychological and philosophical complexity, with the hero, Chagataev, in the role of a 20th-century Moses.

Military history and geography explain each other in North America as nowhere else in the world. The author explores their relationship and examines the battles fought over three centuries between Frenchman and Indian, Royalist and colonist, Union and Confederacy, offering profiles of the land and military leaders, alongside historical events.

The three years in the life of the writer Katherine Mansfield explored in this novel are in part the story of the ups and downs of her relationship with Jack Middleton Murry and her struggle to write the "new kind of fiction" which she felt the times demanded.

From the boundlessness of space walking to the frustrating constrictions of one person's daily existence, this title paints with grace and skill the experience of needing to belong despite wanting to be alone.

After years of service in the Russian navy and a gruelling expedition to Greenland, Captain Frederick Ziege of the Royal Danish Navy is enjoying chaperoning his mother, sister and two marriageable nieces for a season on the Riviera.

"Treading Air" follows the life of Ullo Paerand through 30 years of violent political upheaval. He witnesses first the Soviet and then the German occupation of Estonia. The narrative unfolds in stories imparted to an unknown "author" by a 70 year-old Ullo.

This large-format study of World War I presents the military conflict, the battles on land, sea and in the air, together with interpretations of military events. It also shows how the war acted as an engine for social change, which shaped our contemporary world.

As the story rolls on, through the heyday of pineapple chunks and cocktails, right up to the fashions of today,it touches on pineapples and sex, pineapples and empire, pineapples in art.

It is 1883, and all Ireland's in turmoil with agrarian, political and sectarian revolt. From the opening of this pastoral of love and betrayal, events roll towards an inevitable, tragic end. Below the surface, complex tensions between religions, between men and women, good and evil are explored.

Roddy Doyle's Booker Prize-winning novel describes the world of ten-year-old Paddy Clarke, growing up in Barrytown, north Dublin. From fun and adventure on the streets, boredom in the classroom to increasing isolation at home, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is the story of a boy who sees everything but understands less and less.

Ably managed by Jimmy Rabbitte, brilliantly coached by Joey 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from the parish hall to the steps of the studio door. But can The Commitments live up to their name?The bestselling book behind the long-running West End stage show.

the food of peasants, labourers, townspeople, the wealthy, the poor and the country gentleman; A ground-breaking book, it is a fascinating and authoritative survey of food production, consumption, fashions and follies over a period of five hundred years. Reprinted with a new introduction by food editor Tom Jaine.

Lovebites is the comprehensive Book of Love. With the very best of every love-related piece of poetry, song, art, sauce and literature, it is a far-reaching collection of facts, lists, charts and writing relating to love.

Orwell resigned from the Burma Police in autumn 1927 'because he disliked putting people into prison for doing the same things which he should have done in their circusmtances'. This book draws on his experiences serving in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (some preliminary sketches survive on Government of Burma paper).

Originally published in a censored form, this novel is now presented in a form closer to that first written, though not all passages can be restored. Dorothy's plight can be read with clearer understanding of what Orwell intended.

In this title, David Lodge explores the representation of human consciousness in fiction, mainly English and American, in the light of developments in cognitive science, neuroscience and related disciplines. He includes essays on Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, John Updike, Henry James and others.

Looks back from the sprawl of thirties housing estates, new arterial roads and the domination of the motor-car, to an idealised golden England, largely rural and unmechanised when, in the nostalgia of childhood, it was 'summer...always summer'.

Tales of Protection is a novel about people in different places in different epochs - contemporary Norway, nineteenth-century Sweden, and Renaissance Italy - whose stories are bound together by the author's original and searching enquiry into why things happen the way they do.

Ambitious, winsome, and ceaselessly charismatic, Amy is the star employee of Nichols and Gray, an auction house catering to the shopping pheromones of the rich and powerful. She has turned the pitch into her creative art, using the abundant talents of a sophisticated woman.

All through the night as they go from bar to bar the young man tells the story of the great love of his life, of how in the midst of their rapture the woman inexplicably disappeared, and of how he is now driving across Europe in a desperate attempt to find her.

Dutiful and studious, Elizabeth sets out to reinvent herself in the American Southwest desert, sharing a house built of beer cans with her boyfriend, Spencer. Once back in London, to arrange an impromptu marriage, Elizabeth must weigh the value of that experience against her family's repressions.

In the dramatic landscape of the Italian Alps a group of English canoeists arrive for an introduction to white water rafting. Rather than allowing them to forget their ordinary personalities, the dangerous river brings out qualities and failings in the group.

Set during the Great Depression, 'Waterborne' tells the story of three people who are all drawn to a vast construction site in the Nevada desert.

Offers a collection of entertaining and thought-provoking essays on the relationship between creative writing, the teaching of the same and the task of dramatizing literary works for television and the stage.

Volume 17 of The Complete Works of George OrwellOn 29 March 1945, Orwell's wife Eileen died, aged 39. 'Politics and the English Language', one of Orwell's most important essays, was immediately reprinted for journalists of the Observer and News of the World as a guide to good writing.