Vintage Books

As a result of what she calls 'the only stroke of genius I've ever had', Jane Juska placed a personal ad in a newspaper, that began: 'Before I turn 67 - next March - I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like.' The response was overwhelming, and it changed Jane's life. She told all in A Round-Heeled Woman, which Lynne Truss called 'the...

'The funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.' This is how W.C. Fields described Bert Williams, the highest-paid entertainer in America in his heyday and someone who counted the King of England and Buster Keaton among his fans. Born in the Bahamas, he moved to California with his family. Too poor to attend Stanford University, he...

Stifled by the torpor of colonial South Africa, and trapped in a web of reciprocal oppression, a lonely sheep farmer seeks comfort in the arms of a black concubine. But when his embittered spinster daughter Magda feels shamed, this lurch across the racial divide marks the end of a tenuous feudal peace. As she dreams madly of bloody revenge, Magda's...

One summer evening Lily and her husband are enjoying a meal while their baby daughter sleeps peacefully in her pram beneath a maple tree. But then Lily steps outside to find her baby soaked in blood. The distraught parents rush to the hospital where they discover that she is unharmed. Inspector Sejer is called in and spends the evening trying to...

Many children spend their entire school lives struggling with their work. Research has shown that at least 10-15 per cent of children with apparently normal learning ability will show a significant problem with school learning. They may feel that whatever they do it is not good enough - either for their parents, their teachers or indeed themselves....

In 1941, Irene Némirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through, not in terms of battles and politicians, but by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. She did not live to see her ambition fulfilled, or to know that sixty-five years later, SUITE FRANÇAISE...