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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In 1933, President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt took up residence in the White House. With them went the celebrated journalist Lorena Hickok - Hick to friends - a straight-talking reporter from South Dakota, whose passionate relationship with the idealistic, patrician First Lady would shape the rest of their lives. Told by the indomitable Hick, White Houses is the story of Eleanor and Hick's hidden love, and of Hick's unlikely journey from her dirt-poor childhood to the centre of privilege and power. Filled with fascinating back-room politics, the secrets and scandals of the era, and exploring the potency of enduring love, it is an imaginative tour-de-force from a writer of extraordinary and exuberant talent. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In this provocative novel Mark Blacklock portrays the true and complex history of John Humble, aka Wearside Jack, the Ripper Hoaxer, a timewaster and criminal, sympathetic and revolting, the man hidden by a wall of words, a fiction-spinner worthy of textual analysis. In this remarkable work, John Humble leads the reader into an allusive, elusive labyrinth of interpretations, simultaneously hoodwinking and revealing. I'm Jack is a riveting novel about truth, lies, prison and shame. It is also a profound and furious love letter to Sunderland. It is a puzzle, a hoax, a multi-voice portrait and a virtuoso assemblage of textual elements. I'm Jack announces the arrival of a radically talented and innovative novelist. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Vanessa Nicolson is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. She was born to an illustrious name and an unhappy marriage. Her father, the art historian Ben Nicolson, was homosexual and his marriage to Vanessa's Italian mother fell apart when Vanessa was very young. In this powerful and meditative memoir she chronicles her disjointed childhood and reckless youth, including holidays at Sissinghurst Castle with her cousins, and her experience of a liberal English boarding school. Interlinked with her story is that of her daughter Rosa, who died, aged 19. This book is a meditation on the threads of love and loss that weave through a life and an examination of the meaning of cultural privilege in the context of emotional deprivation. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Diana Athill will be ninety in December, 2007. "Somewhere Towards the End" tells the story of what it means to be old: how the pleasure of sex ebbs, how the joy of gardening grows, how much there is to remember, to forget, to regret, to forgive - and how one faces the inevitable fact of death. Athill has lost none of her skill or candour as a writer, her love of the intimate detail. Her book is filled with stories, events and people, and the kind of honest, intelligent reflection that has been a hallmark of her writing throughout her long career. 'We rarely did anything together except make ourselves a pleasant little supper and go to bed, because we had very little in common apart from liking sex,' she writes of her last affair, when she was in her late sixties. 'We also shared painful feet, which was almost as important as liking sex, because when you start feeling your age it is comforting to be with someone in the same condition.'Diana's previous books are: "Instead of a Letter", "After a Funeral", and "Stet", her much praised memoir of her life as a book editor (many said the best in London) with Andre Deutsch. She describes her books as 'documentaries' and her early work prefigured the modern taste for memoir. As she writes in "Somewhere Towards the End", 'I believed, and still believe, that there is no point describing experience unless one tries to get it as near to what it really was as you can make it, but that belief does come into conflict with a central teaching of my upbringing: do not think yourself important.'. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG FICTION READERS AWARD 'Stunning' Maggie O'Farrell 'Gorgeous, funny and deadly serious' Max Porter 'This is so good. We are not ready nor worthy' Ocean Vuong An obligatory note of hope, in a world going to hell. 'What are you afraid of, he asks me and the answer of course is dentistry, humiliation, scarcity, then he says what are your most useful skills? People think I'm funny.' Lizzie Benson, a part-time librarian, is already overwhelmed with the crises of daily life when an old mentor offers her a job answering mail from the listeners of her apocalyptic podcast, Hell and High Water. Soon questions begin pouring in from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of Western civilization. Entering this polarized world, Lizzie is forced to consider who she is and what she can do to help: as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, and as a citizen of this doomed planet. 'A barometer of how it feels to live now' Sunday Times 'No one writes about the intersection of love and existential despair like Jenny Offill' Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Diana Athill has corresponded with the American poet Edward Field for over thirty years, freely sharing jokes, pleasures and pains with her old friend, and writing with an intimacy and spontaneity even more revealing than the candour of her celebrated memoirs. Edited, selected and introduced by Athill, and annotated with her own delightful notes, this collection of those letters reveals a sharply intelligent woman with a keen eye for the absurd, a brilliant turn of phrase and a wicked sense of humour. Covering her career as an editor, the adventure of her retirement, her immersion in her own writing and her reactions to becoming unexpectedly famous in her old-age, and including gossip about mutual friends, sharp pen portraits, and uninhibited accounts her relationships - and ailments - Instead of a Book gives a wonderful description of a woman growing older without ever losing her zest for life. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Barbara Ehrenreich is an acclaimed social critic on both sides of the Atlantic, renowned for her trenchant, witty polemics, her pieces of journalism, and her trademark intelligence. She writes with unparalleled precision, insight and a rationalist's unwavering gaze. But in middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it. It was the kind of event that people call a 'mystical experience' - and to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, was nothing less than shattering. In Living with a Wild God, Ehrenreich vividly explores her life-long quest to find 'the truth' about the universe and everything else, in an attempt to reconcile this cataclysmic, defining moment with her secular understanding of the world. The result is a profound reflection on science, religion and the human condition, and a personal insight into the inner life of one of our finest thinkers. It is a book that challenges us all to reassess our perceptions of the world and what it means to be alive. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that only a virgin could charm a unicorn out of hiding, but far from being a quaint, anachronistic concept, virginity remains a central value in Western culture. Type 'virgin' into Google and you instantly get over 400,000 hits: everything from the Anti-Nicene Fathers to advertisements for 'Free Teen Virgin Pussy'. This book asks why virginity has remained so important in Western civilization and looks at the changing roles of virginity over the last 800 years, drawing on a wide range of examples from medieval saints to contemporary vampire-slayers. Anke Bernau examines the Medical Virgin (what exactly is virginity, and how can you reliably identify a virgin?), the Religious Virgin (from the Madonna to the American Christian Right's insistence on sexual abstinence before marriage), the Popular Virgin of Gothic fiction and modern-day horror films, the Political Virgin (virginity's intimate connection with money and power) and the Monstrous Virgin (an embodiment of what is ultimately unknowable, and of violence, excess and death). This work is a lively and wide-ranging examination of a phenomenon that has touched many aspects of our culture. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. NAMED AS ONE OF GRANTA MAGAZINE'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2023 A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own potency and power. The publicity seems to turn every act into a performance and every platform into a stage. But when the local drama school decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theatre are forced to meet, and soon the boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve . The Rehearsal is an exhilarating and provocative novel about the unsimple mess of human desire, at once a tender evocation of its young protagonists and a shrewd expose of emotional compromise. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. First published in 1993, Blake Morrison's "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. It became a bestseller, and inspired a whole genre of confessional memoirs. This new edition includes a new afterword by the author."And When Did You Last See Your Father?" won the Waterstone's/Volvo/Esquire Award for Non-Fiction and the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, 1993. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In 1985, Granta published James Fenton's extraordinary - and now legendary - account of the fall of Saigon. Twenty years after the first tank entered the city, four writers examine the aftermath of that terrible war. Philip Gourevitch visits refugee camps across Southeast Asia and meets the boat people fleeing the peace. Tran Vu describes his escape from Vietnam by sea, crammed in a tiny hold with three hundred others: the sharks, the shipwreck, the pirates. Paul Eggers exposes the arrogance and self-loathing of the white-bastard 'saviours' who run the UN refugee camps. And from Bao Ninh, a story about a ghost who still haunts the battlefields. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This work completes the circle begun by "Instead of a Letter" and "Stet". Here Diana Athill looks back on a childhood unfashionably filled with happiness - a Norfolk country house, servants, the pleasures of horses, and the unfolding secrets of adults and sex. This is England in the 1920s, seen with an unsentimental eye from the vantage point of England in 2001. It was a privileged and loving life, of course: but did it equip her to be happy? The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. A survivor of the atomic bombs dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Mr Watanabe has evaded the memory for most of his nomadic life. When the 2011 earthquake strikes, triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the past becomes the present, and Mr Watanabe begins a journey that will change everything. Written with intimacy and compassion, Fracture is a remarkable novel about collective trauma, love and the complexities of human life. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. From the Russian couple haunted by the ghosts of children they never had, to the man who buys a mynah bird in the hope of saving his marriage, these are people who feel that their lives are loose skins they've not quite grown into and perhaps won't ever fit. The world they inhabit is one of half-forgotten dreams and unwhispered yearning. And yet each of them is about to embark upon a journey in which inspiration is found in the most unlikely places, reality is catapulted to the edge of the possible, and even the blackest despair can be illuminated by small, improbable miracles. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. Told in deWitt's darkly comic and arresting style, THE SISTERS BROTHERS is the kind of Western the Coen Brothers might write - stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel ABLUTIONS, THE SISTERS BROTHERS is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work. It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction, which shows an exciting expansion of Dewitt's range. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. WINNER OF THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2018 Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2017 A stunning new non-fiction voice tackles an urgent question. what next for mankind? 'Troubling and humorous, this is one of my current give-it-to-everyone books - I buy six copies at a time' Jeanette Winterson. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Felix is a quitter, with a poor track record behind him. Until the day the opportunity presents itself to make half a million dollars tax-free - by nurturing 390 acres of cannabis in the lonely hills of northern California. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'There is a sense throughout Athill's work that you are making a new friend as much as reading a new story . a delight to read' Observer WINNER OF THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY PRIZE, the moving and witty memoir on what it means to grow old. Written in her nineties, when she was free from any inhibitions she may have once had, Diana Athill reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age can bring, and on the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. Lively, fearless and humorous, Somewhere Towards the End encapsulates the vibrant final decades of Athill's life. Filled with events, love and friendships, this is a memoir about maintaining hope, joy and vigour in later life, resisting regret, and questioning the beliefs and customs of your own generation. 'Informative, honest and lacking in the usual sorrow over old age. A remarkable woman' Beryl Bainbridge 'An honest joy to read' Alice Munro 'The book is a moving and humorous account of old age, unsparing about its indignities, unflinching from the inevitability that the end can not be many years away, but full of joy at the way life keeps on, at the most unexpected moments, renewing itself' Irish Times 'Her brilliant book is entirely lacking in the usual regrets, nostalgia and Hovis-ad recollections of old-timers. It is a little literary gem, penned by a marvellous, feisty old character . What a treasure' Daily Mail. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This is Blake Morrison's memoir of his father, Dr Arthur Morrison. It shows a son asking who his father really was. Was he the man seen through a seven-year-old's eyes, jumping queues, or the sexual charmer seen by a 17-year-old? Or was he the figure, so hard to recognize, on his death-bed? The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This is a portrait of Diego Velazquez, from his arrival at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, to his death 38 years and scores of paintings later. It is a portrait of a relationship that is not quite a friendship, between an artist and his subject. It is a portrait of a ruler, always on duty, and increasingly burdened by a life of public expectation and repeated private grief. And it is a portrait of a court collapsing under the weight of its own excess. Unfolding through series of masterly set-pieces and glancing sketches, this is a novel of brilliance, imagination and sheer style -- about what is shown and what is seen, about art and life. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Stretching for over 5,500 miles, and containing the highest active volcanoes in the world, the largest salt flat, the highest lake, and peaks rivalled in size only by the Himalayas, the Andes impress by statistics alone. But beyond the range's sheer immensity, is its concentration of radically contrasting scenery and climates. In this remarkable book, travel writer Michael Jacobs journeys across seven different countries, from the balmy Caribbean to the inhospitable islands of the Tierra del Fuego, through the relics of ancient civilisations, to retrace the footsteps of previous travellers. His route begins in Venezuela, following the path of the great 19th Century revolutionary Simon Bolivar. On his way Jacobs attempts to uncover the stories of those who have shared his fascination, and to reveal the secrets of a region steeped in history, science and myth. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Amy Bloom's Away revitalizes the American road-trip novel from the perspective of a vulnerable but spirited woman. It paints a vivid, earthy and surprising picture of 1920s America, its smells and textures, its population of drifters and con artists, pimps and prostitutes. Away is storytelling at its finest - epic in sweep, but intimate and psychologically acute, moving but unsentimental. Like the novels of Sarah Waters, it is both richly authentic in its period detail and fresh and contemporary in its style. But, above all, Bloom has created an unforgettable character in Lillian Leyb - her voice, haunted, damaged yet innocent, passionate, witty and unpretentious, is so believable and strong that her presence lingers long after the novel ends. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day's events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. The Smoking Diaries was the result, in which one of Britain's most beloved and original writers reflected on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have been as frank about themselves, and even fewer as entertaining. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Country Life: how it is lived, how it has changed, and how the changes are far from over. An issue that ranges from English fox-hunters to the rice-planters of the Ganges delta. Featuring Tim Adams goes on a fox hunt, Craig Taylor returns to Akenfield thirty-five years after Ronald Blythe's landmark book, and Jeff Sharlet finds out what's eating rural Coloradans. Plus Margaret Atwood, James Hamilton-Paterson, Barry Lopez, Orhan Pamuk and Tim Winton on the weather. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Twelve year old Robert fears numbers and hates maths. Then, in his dreams, he meets the Number Devil who introduces him to the amazing and magical world of numbers. This international bestseller is an exciting adventure in learning for both adults and children which will do for mathematics what "Sophie's World" did for philosophy. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. LAST GASPS Thoughts about Alan while waiting for Harold, by Simon Gray The author of the celebrated and widely-acclaimed The Smoking Diaries returns to print with a tender, affecting, and of course funny account of his friendship with Alan Bates, written as he waits in Barbados for Harold Pinter to turn up. PLUS: Said Sayrafiezadeh on the perils of having a socialist for a father Simon Garfield on his obsession with faulty postage stamps Wayne McLennan on the Australian outback's last boxing nomads. And Margaret Atwood, James Hamilton-Paterson, James Lasdun, Orhan Pamuk, Maarten 't Hart and Tim Winton on our changing weather. With new fiction by Frederic Tuten and Gllad Evron. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. It can be hard to love the people we should love; sometimes objects of affection are easier. This issue includes Jonathan Taylor's frank and bitterly funny account of a boyhood spent caring for a father with Parkinson's Disease ('Who are you?'), Jeremy Seabrook on the twin brother he hardly knew, and Sean Wilsey on his devotion to bicycles. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Not so much the state we're in as the mess we're getting into. The world we were born into has gone. We shall never completely recapture its climate, its seasons, the way its plants grew and its animals lived. This is not a wild-eyed prediction, a man on the street with a placard. Respectable science knows it and says it. Nine of the world's ten warmest years since records were kept have occurred in the past fourteen years. Every month, an English garden moves south, climatically, by a distance of one hundred yards. Who is responsible? We are our habits. Can we prevent it? Too late. Can we moderate it, slow it, reverse it? Yes- if we try. This issue of "Granta" contains reports from the frontiers of environment change. Contributors include: Marion Botsford-Fraser; James Hamilton-Paterson; Matthew Hart; Thomas Keneally; Philip Marsden; Bill McKibben; Wayne McLennan; Christopher de Bellaigue; James Meek; and Nuha al-Radi in Iraq. There is new fiction from Maarten 't Hart and Jon McGregor, and a picture essay by Edward Burtynsky on our industrial landscapes. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Good. An issue devoted to the dubious rewards and strange effects of fame which successfully avoids mentioning Andy Warhol. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.