But his past life is a recurring nightmare—filth, desperation, and blackouts. And more trouble is only a hundred miles away. Darren and Alastair leave Liverpool, heading south in a rickety old car. They have been sent by their gang boss to wreak violent revenge, but they have only a rough idea of their quarry: a one-armed man.Interspersed between the scabrous banter and a pitch-perfect street dialect, Niall Griffiths offers stunning descriptions of the Welsh landscape and a dark, knowing humor. Despite the ever present drugs, violence, and anger, he reveals a fragile humanity. Graywolf is proud to introduce this striking, distinctive voice to American readers.

    Shortly before Dee dies, she tells her son, Thomas, that she thinks her death is a punishment. Thomas, whose own emotional life is complicated, tries to piece together his parents' lives in order to make sense of his mother's words.

    In death she becomes a greater icon than in life, and the Norfolk village where she lived is soon a place of pilgrimage. Six years later her husband Harry, a schoolteacher, is still haunted by her suicide and faithful to her memory. Until he meets Helen and they fall in love. Harry and Helen’s relationship initiates a return to the scene of Alison’s death where they meet ninety-eight year old Ern Higham, and a tale is revealed that has been generations in the making. As Harry pieces together a tragic history and finally confronts his own pain, he discovers that to truly move forward, first he must understand the past ... ‘A moving read, threaded through with mystery and excitement.’ – Good Housekeeping Magazine ‘A thriller full of twists and turns that keeps the reader guessing. Every word is magical, almost luminous.’ – Daily Mail ‘A classic tale of longing.’ – Time Out ‘There are many elements to savour in this novel: the intertwining of past and present; the struggle to write and the responsibility of writing about others’ lives. Best of all, Lofthouse has a fine eye for the bleak Norfolk landscape and how it both reflects and affects characters’ moods.’ – Tracy Chevalier author of Girl with a Pearl Earring ‘Captures the spacey feel of Norfolk well – an engaging read, intriguingly structured, tough in some of its insights, and sexy too.’ – Lindsay Clarke, author of The Chymical Wedding, winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction ‘Those who feel the reading public’s love of the 19th century Gothic mystery may be abating will be given pause by this latest entry in the field of pastiche. This is a considerable piece, full of subtle characterization and a well-chosen raft of literary underpinnings.’ – Publishing News ‘The intertwining of the two main stories is very skilfully done, as is the delicacy and understanding she brings to the key themes – suicide, creativity, love and especially paternal love. Very moving.’ – Henry Sutton, novelist and co-director MA Creative Writing, UEA

    A gripping thriller from the author of the Goodfellowe Series.

    Pagford is not what it first seems.And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

    It’s 2008 and things are falling apart: Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are going under, and the residents of Pepys Road, London—a banker and his shopaholic wife, an old woman dying of a brain tumor and her graffiti-artist grandson, Pakistani shop owners and a shadowy refugee who works as the meter maid, the young soccer star from Senegal and his minder—are receiving anonymous postcards reading “We Want What You Have.” Who is behind it? What do they want? Epic in scope yet intimate, capturing the ordinary dramas of very different lives, this is a novel of love and suspicion, of financial collapse and terrorist threat, of property values going up and fortunes going down, and of a city at a moment of extraordinary tension.

    The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle--young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa's killers as well. A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carre portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy as Justin Quayle--amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat--discovers his own natural resources, and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.

    1 bestselling author of Fatherland; Enigma; Archangel; Pompeii and Imperium. “The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now. I should have said, ‘Rick, I’m sorry, this isn’t for me, I don’t like the sound of it,’ finished my drink and left. But he was such a good storyteller, Rick — I often thought he should have been the writer and I the agent — that once he’d started talking there was never any question I wouldn’t listen, and by the time he had finished, I was done for.”After five books set firmly in the past, Robert Harris returns with a contemporary novel that brings the reader face to face with some of the biggest issues of our time — the result is a gripping and genuinely thrilling read.

    A series of apparently random murders draws amiable, old-school Detective Mick Matlock into a world of sex, politics, reality TV and a bewildering kaleidoscope of opposing identity groups. Lost in a blizzard of hashtags, his already complex investigation is further impeded by the fact that he simply doesn’t ‘get’ a single thing about anything anymore.Meanwhile, each day another public figure confesses to having ‘misspoken’ and prostrates themselves before the judgement of Twitter. Begging for forgiveness, assuring the public “that is not who I am”.But if nobody is who they are anymore - then who the f##k are we? Ben Elton returns with a blistering satire of the world as it fractures around us. Get ready for a roller-coaster thriller, where nothing - and no one - is off limits.

    Charles Goodwin, the garden committee president, would like the garden to stay just the way it is. Lord Vernon of Barnstable, the appalling life peer, has plans for the garden. Bryony Mullins, the gusset-mouthed harridan, doesn't give a flying knicker elastic what happens to the garden as long as it's not what Vernon wants. Angel Tenby, the sexually organic gardener, wants the garden to run free. Mrs Kotzen, the neighbour, wants the garden to be chic. The vicar wants the garden to be accessible and relevant. Lily Ng, the teenage daily, would probably think the garden silly if she thought about it at all; she wants to offer sex in lieu of ironing. Mona Corinth, the Hollywood legend, is dead and may be about to become part of the garden. Iona Wallace is the obligatory love interest. She would like to be a garden: laid, forked, plucked, seeded, mulched, vigorously pollarded, bedded and admired for her natural beauty. The garden wants absolutely nothing at all.Sap Rising may well be a story about dark dank nature both human and vegetable and our uneasy relationship with the mystic natural forces that move the earth. It may be a parable on the fragile consensus that maintains and tends green England. On the other hand, it might just be a farcical love story set in a garden about nothing of any consequence performed by comic grotesques with a lot of swearing and unnatural sex.

    High Dive not only takes us inside this audacious assassination attempt--a decisive act of violence on the world stage--but also imagines its way into a group of unforgettable characters. Nimbly weaving together fact and fiction, comedy and tragedy, the story switches among the perspectives of Dan, a young IRA explosives expert; Moose, a former star athlete gone to seed, who is now the deputy hotel manager; and Freya, his teenage daughter, trying to decide what comes after high school. Over the course of a mere four weeks, as the prime minister’s arrival draws closer, each of their lives will be transformed forever. A bold, astonishingly intimate novel of laughter and heartbreak, High Dive is a moving portrait of clashing loyalties, guilt and regret, and how individuals become the grist of history.“Achingly good . . . on a par with Martin Amis.” —The New Yorker"A novel so smart and compassionate and beautifully written that it asks for total immersion." –Lauren Groff, bestselling author of FATES AND FURIES

    Under his arbitration, unimaginable atrocities are coolly dissected; invisible and ancient lines, grown taut and frayed with conflict, redrawn.In his latest post, Edvard has been sent a nondescript resort hotel in the Tyrol. High up on this mountain, the air is bright and clear. When he isn't working, Edvard reads, walks, listens to music. He confides in no one – no one but his wife Anna. Anna, who he loves with all his heart; Anna, always present and yet forever absent.Honest, honourable, tragic, witty, wise, an unforgettable novel of love, loss, and the human longing for peace, Peace Talks maps the darkest and most tender territories of the human heart.

    “Well written and I was left wanting to read on.... It is certainly an intriguing concept” (Troubador)“Writing is dynamic and fast-paced. There's a definite charm about the novel that, I think, would appeal to the kind of audience cultivated by writers such as Marina Lewycka” (HHB Agency)“What a charming novel. I’m from Dundee myself, and the masterful way you wove together setting and culture was admirable. Your characters, too, were powerful yet compassionate, and the prose had a lovely twisting quality” (Canongate Press)“This is fresh and intriguing” (Andrew Lownie)Mrs Keiller's Marmalade is a book about marmalade, the isolation of old age, respect for tradition and the pain of abandonment. Maggie Keiller is a fictional descendent of John Keiller, the last patriarch of Keiller marmalade, whose clan famously created the first ‘Dundee Marmalade’. She is married John's son Billy Keiller in 1909 but lost him in the same year to a storm which visited their small enclave of Auchobane, a village perched precociously on the Dundee coastline of North-East Scotland. Forward fifty years, and Maggie lives a lonely life in Rose Cottage surrounded only by her jars of fine and vintage homemade marmalade. Her only visitor is Dougie, an elderly grocery man and decorated veteran. Maggie’s life is changed when she unexpectedly receives a letter from her estranged niece in London, asking for haven for her teenage daughter. Maggie takes her on, not out of affection for her niece whom she loathes, but to fill the void left by her childless marriage. Isla arrives in 1969, a year on the cusp of a revolution in the London she has just left, and in her own life, hiding the pregnancy she has kept from her mother. Maggie teaches Isla about her heritage, and hopes to pass on to her the tradition of marmalade making. For Isla, abandoned by mother and lover, and struggling to cope with the imminent arrival of an unwanted child, her bond with Maggie becomes a channel to help regain the self-esteem taken from her over her young years. The book culminates in Isla’s entry into the silver spoon Marmalade competition, fifty years after Maggie Keiller had taken the same prize.

    What he does know, however, is that his father, Guy, is dying of cancer.Feeling his death is imminent, Guy gathers around him his oldest friends – or at least the friends with the most to lose by his death.Paul – the rising star in the Labour party who dreads the day a tape they all made at university might come to light; Alison and Robbie, corporate bunnies whose relationship is daily more fractious; Pris and Haze, once an item, now estranged, and finally Hol – friend, mentor, former lover and the only one who seemed to care.But what will happen to Kit when Guy is gone? And why isn’t Kit’s mother in the picture? As the friends reunite for Guy’s last days, old jealousies, affairs and lies come to light as Kit watches on.

    All his fiction is available in Penguin editions and the two stories in this collection illustrate Self's gift for finding the extraordinary, the surreal and the downright absurd amidst the mundanities of modern life.- Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo- A Story for Europe