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Reissued with stunning artwork by Leanne Shapton and a new afterword by Anne Enright, Woodcutters is a blistering European classic. An unnamed writer arrives at an 'artistic dinner' hosted by a composer and his society wife: a couple he once admired, but has now come to detest. They have been brought together by their friend Joana's suicide, but the guest of honour, a famous actor from the Burgtheatre, is late. As the guests await his arrival, little do they know that they are being subjected to the narrator's merciless scrutiny from his wing-backed throne, the targets of a tirade of epic, frenzied proportions. When the star actor finally arrives, he ushers in an explosive end to the evening that is impossible to see coming. Originally banned in Thomas Bernhard's homeland, Woodcutters brutally exposes the hollow pretentiousness of the Austrian bourgeoisie in an unforgettable firework display of humour and horror.

Reissued with stunning artwork by Leanne Shapton and a new afterword by Ben Lerner, Wittgenstein's Nephew is a memento mori of restless genius. It is 1967. Two men lie bedridden in separate wings of a Viennese hospital. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their friendship quickens, these two eccentric men discover in each other an antidote to their feelings of despair on the unexpected strength of what they share - a spiritual symmetry forged by their love of music, black humour, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and fear of mortality. A restless blend of fiction and memoir, Wittgenstein's Nephew is not only a haunting meditation on the artist's struggle to maintain a foothold on reality, but an impassioned eulogy to a real-life friendship.

Reissued with stunning artwork and a new afterword by Leanne Shapton, The Loser is Thomas Bernhard's iconic portrait of creative obsession. Mid-century Austria. Three aspiring concert pianists - Wertheimer, Glenn Gould, and the narrator - have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. But one day, two of them overhear Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both. They are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: Wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retreating into obscurity to write a book that he periodically destroys and restarts. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, Thomas Bernhard's dazzling meditation on failure, genius, and fame is a radical new reading experience: musical, paralysing, raging, and inimitable.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was one of the writers who defined the course of twentieth-century poetry. In the Letters, we discover the art of Plath's correspondence. Most has never before been published, and it is here presented unabridged, without revision, so that she speaks directly in her own words. The letters document Plath's extraordinary literary development: the genesis of many poems, short and long fiction, and journalism. Leading Plath scholars Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil, editor of The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962, provide comprehensive footnotes and an extensive index informed by their meticulous research. Alongside a selection of photographs and Plath's own drawings, they masterfully contextualise what the pages disclose. This later correspondence witnesses Plath and Hughes becoming major, influential contemporary writers, as it happened. Experiences recorded include first books and other publications; teaching; committing to writing full-time; travels; making professional acquaintances; settling in England; starting a family; and buying a house. Throughout, Plath's voice is completely, uniquely her own.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was one of the writers who defined the course of twentieth-century poetry. Her vivid, daring and complex poetry continues to captivate new generations of readers and writers. In the Letters, we discover the art of Plath's correspondence, most of which has never before been published and is here presented unabridged, without revision, so that she speaks directly in her own words. Refreshingly candid and offering intimate details of her personal life, Plath is playful, too, entertaining a wide range of addressees, including family, friends and professional contacts, with inimitable wit and verve. The letters document Plath's extraordinary literary development: the genesis of many poems, short and long fiction, and journalism. Her endeavour to publish in a variety of genres had mixed receptions, but she was never dissuaded. Through acceptance of her work, and rejection, Plath strove to stay true to her creative vision. Well-read and curious, she offers a fascinating commentary on contemporary culture. Leading Plath scholars Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil, editor of The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962, provide comprehensive footnotes and an extensive index informed by their meticulous research. Alongside a selection of photographs and Plath's own line-drawings, the editors masterfully contextualise what the pages disclose. This selection of early correspondence marks the key moments of Plath's adolescence, including childhood hobbies and high school boyfriends; her successful but turbulent undergraduate years at Smith College; the move to England and Cambridge University; and her meeting and marrying Ted Hughes, including a trove of unseen letters post-honeymoon, revealing their extraordinary creative partnership.

Kavanagh begins his time patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has to do two years of this. 729 more nights. The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and will never have to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. But what if something did happen - if the Others came, if he had to fight for his life? Thrilling and heartbreaking, The Wall is about a troubled world you will recognise as your own - and about what might be found when all is lost. The Wall was longlisted for the Booker Prize in July 2019.

Petina Gappah's epic journey through nineteenth-century Africa - following the funeral caravan who bore Bwana Daudi's body - is 'engrossing, beautiful and deeply imaginative.' (Yaa Gyasi) This is the story of the body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, the explorer David Livingstone - and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own country. The wise men of his age say Livingstone blazed into the darkness of their native land leaving a track of light behind where white men who followed him could tread in perfect safety. But in Petina Gappah's radical novel, it is those in the shadows of history - those who saved a white man's bones; his dark companions; his faithful retinue on an epic funeral march - whose voices are resurrected with searing intensity. This final, fateful journey across the African interior is lead by Halima, Livingstone's sharp-tongued cook, and three of his most devoted servants: Jacob, Chuma and Susi. Their tale of how his corpse was borne out of nineteenth-century Africa - carrying the maps that sowed the seeds of the continent's brutal colonisation - has the power of myth. It is not only symbolic of slavery's hypocrisy, but a portrait of a world trembling on the cusp of total change - and a celebration of human bravery, loyalty and love.

For thousands of years, humans have built walls and assaulted them, admired walls and reviled them. Great Walls have appeared on nearly every continent, accompanying the rise of cities, nations, and empires. In Walls, David Frye uncovers a story that is more than just bricks and stone: he reveals the startling link between what we build and how we live, who we are and how we came to be. It is nothing less than the story of civilization.

Stella Starflake Pearl is eagerly anticipating her next expedition. Suddenly disaster strikes when Stella's father, Felix, is snatched by a fearsome witch. Stella must bring her magic ice princess tiara to Witch Mountain or she will never see Felix again! But no one ever returns from Witch Mountain . . . Stella, Ethan, Shay, Beanie and reluctant Jungle Cat explorer, Gideon, set off into the unknown. They will face chomping pumpkin patches, vampire trolls, poisonous rabbits, outraged vultures and deranged broomsticks in their quest to rescue Felix.

In Mars By 1980, David Stubbs charts the evolution of electronic music from the earliest mechanical experiments in the late nineteenth century, through to the familiar sounds of electronica, house and techno that we know today. It's a tale of mavericks and future dreamers overcoming Luddite resistance, malfunctioning devices, and sonic mayhem. The beginnings may be in the world of avant-classical composition, but it continues on through the cosmic funk of Stevie Wonder and Giorgio Moroder, via the astonishing sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, through unforgettable eighties electropop by the likes of Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys and Laurie Anderson, and right up to present-day innovators on the underground scene.

In perhaps the most magnificent of what he called his 'strange stories', Robert Aickman blurs the lines between memory, premonition and the hallucinated life. Lene, a woman now recovering from the losses of the Second World War, recalls a gothic dolls' house of her childhood and the way in which its uncanny inhabitants entered her dreams. Most chillingly, the geometries of the house didn't add up; there had to be a secret room inside it. Years later, she comes across a life-size version in a wood not marked on any map . . .

In a remote Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and violated-by what many thought were ghosts or demons-as punishment for their sins. Their accounts were chalked up to 'wild female imagination.' Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. When the women learn that they were in fact drugged and attacked by men in their community, they hold a secret meeting in a hayloft. They have two days to make a plan before the rapists are bailed out and brought home: will they dare to escape?

The perfect book for anyone who's ever had their heart broken, anyone who's ever had their broken heart mended, and anyone who's ever visited a bookshop... Tom Hope doesn't chase rainbows. He does his best on the farm - he milks the cows, harvests the apples, looks after the sheep - but Tom's been lonely since his wife Trudy left, taking little Peter with her to go join the holy rollers. Enter Hannah Babel, quixotic smalltown bookseller: the second Jew - and the most vivid person - Tom has ever met. When she asks him to move in, and help her build Australia's most beautiful bookshop, Tom dares to believe they could make each other happy. But it is 1968: twenty-four years since Hannah and her own little boy arrived at Auschwitz. Tom Hope is taking on a battle with heartbreak he can barely even begin to imagine.

Elizabeth Hardwick's iconic essay collection Seduction and Betrayal is a radical portrait of women and literature, reissued with a new introduction by Deborah Levy. 'Hardwick's sentences are burned in my brain.' - Susan Sontag Sidelined. Betrayed. Killed off. Elizabeth Hardwick dissects the history of women and literature. In her most virtuoso work of criticism, she explores the lives of the Brontes, Woolf, Eliot and Plath; the fate of literary wives such as Zelda Fitzgerald and Jane Carlyle; and the destinies of fictional heroines from Richardson's Clarissa to Ibsen's Nora. With fierce empathy and biting wit, Hardwick mines their childhoods, families, and personalities to probe the costs of sex, love, and marriage. Shattering the barrier between writing and life, she asks who is the seducer and who the seduced; who the victim and who the victor. First published in 1974, yet both urgently timely and timeless, Seduction and Betrayal explodes the conventions of the essay: and the result is nothing less than a reckoning.

'A series of fleeting images and memories ... united by the high intelligence and beauty of Hardwick's prose.' - Sally Rooney Rediscover a lost American classic: Sleepless Nights, a kaleidoscopic scrapbook of one woman's memories, here reissued with a new introduction by Eimear McBride. I am alone here in New York, no longer a we ... First published in 1979, Sleepless Nights is a unique collage of fiction and memoir, letters and essays, portraits and dreams. It is more than the story of a life: it is Elizabeth Hardwick's experience of womanhood in the twentieth century. Escaping her childhood home of Kentucky, the narrator arrives at a bohemian hotel in Manhattan filled with 'drunks, actors, gamblers ... love and alcohol and clothes on the floor.' Here begin the erotic affairs and dinner parties, the abortions and heartbreaks, the friendships and 'people I have buried'. Here are luminous sketches of characters she has met that illuminate the era's racism, sexism, and poverty. Above all, here is prose blurring into poetry, language to lose - and perhaps to find - yourself in. Society tries to write these lives before they are lived. It does not always succeed.

*LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019* Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this, 729 more nights. The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and never has to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. He longs for this to be over; longs to be somewhere else. He will soon find out what Defenders do and who the Others are. Along with the rest of his squad, he will endure cold and fear day after day, night after night. But somewhere, in the dark cave of his mind, he thinks: wouldn't it be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if you had to fight for your life? John Lanchester's thrilling, hypnotic new novel is about why the young are right to hate the old. It's about a broken world you will recognise as your own-and about what might be found when all is lost. The Wall was longlisted for the Booker Prize in July 2019.