Books published by Vintage Publishing

'Pure appetite,' he writes ironically early in the collection, 'I wouldn't know anything about that.' And the following poem answers: Down there the little star-nosed engine of desire at work all night, secretive: in the morninga new line running across the wet grass, near the surface, like a vein.

Dovaleh G, a veteran stand-up comic - charming, erratic, repellent - exposes a wound he has been living with for years: a fateful and gruesome choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him. A Horse Walks into a Bar is a shocking and breathtaking read.

Jo Stoyte is afraid of death. Written while he was living in California, this is Huxley's response to Hollywood's superficiality and obsession with youth, a powerful cautionary tale which employs all his customary wit and merciless insight.

Sebastian Barnack, a handsome English schoolboy, is on bad terms with his socialist father who disapproves of his hedonistic lifestyle. His education there, thanks to the contradictory influences of his scurrilous Uncle Eustace and a saintly bookseller, is both sacred and profane.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARDPeggy Kirkpatrick has been talking about a baby called Eleanor. Determined to unravel the mystery of Peggy's past, Aggie begins to search. But as curiosity turns to obsession, the drive for truth starts to threaten her marriage, her family, and her already fragile mind...

Sam is 27 and needs to get a job. Keith, who claims to be a second cousin of his (absent) father, offers him one. On Keith's card it says he does 'distribution and delivery', which seems to consist of 'a lot of driving around, getting out of the car for a few minutes and then getting back in', Sam tells his mother.

The writer's mission will be to transform himself into a living art installation, by sitting down to write every morning in a Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of town. Once in Kassel, the writer is surprised to find himself overcome by good cheer.

His father Brian taught Rory Stewart how to walk, and walked with him on journeys from Iran to Malaysia. Now they have chosen to do their final walk together along 'the Marches' - the frontier that divides their two countries, Scotland and England. This book is about their experiences and a chronicle of contemporary Britain.

Acknowledged as a masterpiece of materialist criticism, this book delves into the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination. Surveying two hundred years of history and English literature - from George Eliot to George Orwell - Williams provides insights into the social and economic forces that have shaped British culture and society.

High on Olympus, Zeus and the assembled deities look down on the world of men, to the city of Troy where a bitter and bloody war has dragged into its tenth year, and a quarrel rages between a legendary warrior and his commander. Greek ships decay, men languish, exhausted, and behind the walls of Troy a desperate people await the next turn of fate.

From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hard-wired in humans, this author examines zig-zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and and more.

The most thrilling, genre-busting, unlikely science book you'll ever read, from the world-renowned, multi-award-winning, superstar physicist Lisa Randal. 66 million years ago, a ten-mile-wide object from outer space hurtled into the Earth at incredible speed.

In 1845, a Reading bookseller came across the portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velazquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history - a quest that led from fame to ruin and exile. This book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania.

'REVELATORY' - DAILY TELEGRAPH *****'FASCINATING' - OBSERVER'ENGROSSING' - DAILY MAIL'You'll worry at your hunger to keep on reading, but you won't be able to stop' - GUARDIAN, Book of the Year David Litvinoff was one of the great mythic characters of '60s London.

Now a major film directed by Danny Boyle reuniting the cast of TrainspottingYears on from Trainspotting Sick Boy is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London.

Featureing Jim Broadbent, Brenda Blethyn and Luke Treadaway Utterly original, deeply moving and very funny, this is the story of Raymond Briggs' parents' marriage, lady's maid Ethel and milkman Ernest, from their first chance encounter in 1928, through the birth of their son Raymond in 1934, to their deaths, within months of each other, in 1971.

CLEAN BEAUTY. Discover the delights of making your own beauty products in the comfort of your own home. The London-based Clean Beauty Co are leading the way with luxury beauty recipes packed full of only the good stuff.

Shakespeare was a man of his time, constantly engaging with his audience's deepest desires and fears. In this book, by reconnecting with this historic reality we are able to experience the true character of the playwright himself. It traces Shakespeare's unfolding imaginative generosity.

The stranger arrives early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow. He is wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his hat hides every inch of his face. Rude and rough, the stranger works with strange apparatus locked in his room all day and walks along lonely lanes at night. Is he a criminal on the run?

From our earliest childhood experiences, we learn to see the world as contested space: a battleground between received ideas, entrenched conventions and myriad Authorised Versions on the one hand, and new discoveries, terrible dangers, and everyday miracles on the other.

In a village far away, deep in a valley, all the animals and birds disappeared some years ago. Eventually they find themselves in a beautiful garden paradise full of every kind of animal, bird and fish - the home of Nehi the Mountain Demon.

Jerry White's London in the Twentieth Century, Winner of the Wolfson Prize, is a masterful account of the city's most tumultuous century by its leading expert. In 1901 no other city matched London in size, wealth and grandeur.

Nella, daughter of millionaire Theodore Racksole, orders a dinner of steak and beer at the exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel in London. But when hotel staff begin to vanish and a German prince goes missing, Nella discovers that murder, blackmail and kidnapping are also on the menu.

Miserly and mysterious, the richest man in the Five Towns lives simply, ruling his household with an iron fist and a cruel temper. But when she comes of age, Anna inherits a small fortune and attracts the attentions of the town's most eligible bachelor.

No longer a boy, not quite a man, Edwin Clayhanger stands on a canal bridge on his last day of school, and surveys the valley of Bursley and the Five Towns.

Witty, comedic and engrossing, this second collection showcases the range of W. The delightful satires of marriage Lady Frederick and Home and Beauty are included here alongside the insightful war drama For Services Rendered, and Maugham's tense colonial drama The Letter.

This is not a 'how-to' book in any sense, Korn wants to get at the 'why' of craft in particular, and the satisfaction of creative work in general, to understand its essential nature.

'Somehow it seemed to him the only thing that would really solve the problem would be to return to the sea and find the old ring with their names and the wedding date engraved inside, in 22-carat gold, and put it on again and then the world would magically return to what it had been before.

Tells the story of Hollywood. This book takes us from the discovery of oil in the Twenties with the story of the tycoon Edward Doheny and traces the growth of corruption through the syndicates, the mob, and the movie studios - from the beginnings of the film industry to the end, with News Corp and Rupert Murdoch.

'I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in.' So says Angela Carter of this collection, written during a period living in Toyko.