Books published by Vintage Publishing

A Guardian / Herald Scotland Book of the YearWinner of the 2017 PEN Pinter prize Shortlisted for the 2017 Forward PrizeA remote townland in County Mayo, Carrigskeewaun has been for nearly fifty years Michael Longley's home-from-home, his soul-landscape.

or fans of Adrian Mole and Nick Hornby and readers of all ages, this is a novel for the listicle generation.

Bob Slocum is anxious, bored and fearful of his job. So why is it he wants nothing more than the chance to speak at the next company convention? In this darkly satirical book, the author takes us for a turn on the maddening hamster wheel of work.

Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy are four of the most famous sisters in literature. This book features stories of the joys and heartaches they share, which is also a celebration of the special ties of sisterhood.

Why should one half be free to live, while the other is doomed to watch silently from the sidelines? In this collection, the author leads us on a transformative journey through the liberating powers of the mind.

Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first arrives in London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker...

Can we truly know the one we love? The author looks straight into the green eye of every lover's jealous struggle. He broods on why we are driven to try possess one another, how jealousy can outlive death, and whether we can ever reclaim those careless days of first love.

A self-described 'emigrant from one place and a newcomer in two', the author explores the true meaning of home. He looks at what it means to belong, whether roots are real and homelands imaginary, what it is like to reconfigure your past from fragments of memory and what happens when East meets West.

How to be a good father? From children's birthday parties, unsuccessful family holidays, to humiliating antenatal music classes, this account of family life presents the trials of parenthood.

Sets out a manifesto for how to cook (and eat) good food every day with a minimum of fuss. From basic roast chicken and pea risotto to white truffles and Turkish Delight figs, the author brings the joy back into the kitchen.

What's the worst another drink could do? From the calculating teenager who raids her parents' liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, this title includes stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done.

How does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, he describes an illness that reduced him from a successful writer to a man arranging his own destruction.

When it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this book, the author confronts our unending obsession with the end. It reflects on what it means to miss God, whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually turn into our parents.

How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? The author - lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual - finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer this very question. He recounts his journey from disbelief to something approaching inner peace and tackles one of the great mysteries of our time - how to survive this modern age.

Babies: our biggest mystery and our most natural consequence, our hardest test and our enduring love. The author describes the intensity, bewilderment and extravagant happiness of her experience of having babies, from the exhaustion of early pregnancy to first smiles and becoming acquainted with the long reaches of the night.

But the wild is always close at hand, ready to erupt. This is a place where animals and people commingle and fuse, where curious metamorphoses take place, where myth and dark magic still linger.

None are safe as they're pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight. Vivid, tumultuous and propulsive, Void Star is Zachary Mason's mind-bending follow-up to his bestselling debut The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

In 2003, the author arrived in Egypt as a 23-year-old trainee journalist. She found a country on the brink of change. In this book, she unravels the complex forces shaping the lives of four young Egyptians caught between tradition and modernity, and what their stories mean for the future of the Middle East.

Observer Graphic Novel of the MonthCollecting Sticks is a graphic novel about a family glamping trip.

Can civilization save us from ourselves? In this book, that is the question the author asks in a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul.

A collection of poems that offer a fresh perspective on the heights we scale and the distances we run, the routes we follow and the paths we make for ourselves. It also includes odes to the women who dared to break new ground - from Miss Jemima Morrell to the modern British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, who died descending from the summit of K2.

What on earth could have induced Mr Anstruther to fall in love with Fraulein Schmidt? He is an eligible English bachelor from a good family with great expectations; But Rose-Marie Schmidt is also funny, intelligent, brave and gifted with an irrepressible talent for happiness. The real question is, does Mr Anstruther know how lucky he is?

how the suburbs dug for victory in World War II. With a brief guide to particular historic or evocative gardens open to the public, this is a book to put in your pocket when planning a summer day out - but also to read in your deckchair with a glass of cold wine, when dead-heading is simply too much.

When a girl is found dead with a signed copy of Rudian Stefa's latest book in her possession, the author finds himself summoned for an interview by the Party Committee.

Parks are such a familiar part of everyday life, you might be forgiven for thinking they have always been there. In fact, public parks are an invention.The author excavates the history of parks in all their colour and complexity. It is a celebration of a small wonder that - in an age of swingeing cuts - we should not take for granted.

Stan and Nan are all of our grandparents, their stability and infinite kindness much mourned as our ever-changing worlds spin frantically on.'Rachel Cooke, ObserverMy nan wrote me many letters back in 2011.

WINNER OF THE CRICKET SOCIETY AND MCC BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2016SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD'I doubt there will be a better book written about this period in West Indies cricket history.' Clive LloydCricket had never been played like this.

Twenty years ago, Jacqueline Yallop was leading guided walks at Nenthead, one of a network of 'model' villages which sprang up across Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In the summer of 1875, two travellers walk south across the Lincolnshire Wolds to a village riven with dark secrets. When Norman Tanner kills his workmate on a cold February morning a century later, he thinks he's got away with murder.

A miserable place of rain and bog or a sunny upland of exquisite natural beauty, here the elements are raw, the sky huge and nature seems ascendant. But it is no less a place made by human beings.