Showing results by author "A.S. Byatt" in All Categories

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.

A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights" (The New York Times Book Review). With an introduction by David Mitchell, best-selling author of...

A collection of short fiction from Terry Pratchett, spanning the whole of his writing career from schooldays to Discworld and the present day. In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world's best-selling and best-loved authors. Here...

Famous author Olive Wellwood writes a special private book, bound in different colours, for each of her children. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets.

A spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children's book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves. When Olive Wellwood's oldest son discovers a runaway...

Glowing with narrator Virginia Leishman’s finely tuned phrasing, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye is the perfect introduction to A.S. Byatt, an author who continues to receive international awards and acclaim. Her wondrous fairy tales are iridescent stories full of spells, marvelous creatures, and beautiful princesses.

Winner of England's Booker Prize and a literary sensation Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. As a pair of young scholars research the lives of two Victorian poets, they uncover their letters, journals, and poems...

In two breathtakingly accomplished novellas, A. S. Byatt explores the landscape of Victorian England, where science and spiritualism are both popular manias, and domestic decorum coexists with brutality and perversion.

Twenty-three stories, all unabridged, from a diverse group of star writers and readers. A truly memorable collection with a wide appeal. Includes "The Years Midnight" by Helen Simpson, read by Harriet Walter; "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful Morning" by Haruki Marukami, read by Walter Lewis; "Bablady" by A. S. Byatt, read by Roslaind Eyres; "Hotel des Vaoyaguerus" by William Boyd, read by Martin Jarvis; and "Who?" by Fay Weldon, read by Julie Christie.

Inspired by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, this ambitious quartet from Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt charts the lives of the Potter family between 1953 and 1970. Set against the changing social and political landscape of England in the '50s and '60s, it follows the heroine, Frederica, from precocious teenager to TV talk-show host and from her Yorkshire home to the heart of swinging London.

In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world’s best-selling and best-loved authors. Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett’s long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press, and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the Discworld series.

In this intoxicating novel, Frederica falls almost by accident into a career in television in London, while tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life and those of the people she loves.

Through the author's wayward, lovingly drawn characters and breathtaking twists of plot, she illuminates the effervescence of the 1960s, both its excitements and its dangers, as no one has done before.

As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on Britain, one young girl is evacuated to the countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new life, whose dark, war-ravaged days feel very removed from the peace and love being preached in church and at school. Then she is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods - a book of ancient Norse myths - and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. She feels an instant kinship with these vivid, beautiful, terrifying tales of the end of the gods - they seem far more real, far more familiar during these precarious days.

In The Matisse Stories, this Booker Prize-winning author offers three elegant tales that explore the subtle interplays between mind and eye, heart and hand. In the first, Medusa’s Ankles, a fashionable woman watches her life take on darker, more ominous shades in the mirror of a beauty salon.

In 1953, at an isolated boys’ school in the Yorkshire moors, is a young teacher, Alexander Wedderburn, whose imagination had been captured by the Queen Elizabeth of Shakespeare and Spenser and who has written an historical verse play about her. Now, suddenly, his play has been taken up by a wealthy patron of the arts who envisions its production on the most magnificent scale, for it is to be the climax of a local festival honoring the new Queen Elizabeth.

In this elegant set of stories, three modern women are touched in different ways by the paintings of Henri Matisse. The three stories are "Medusa's Ankles", "Art Works", and "The Chinese Lobster".

Ragnarok is the story of the end of the world. It is a tale of destruction of life on this planet and the end of the gods themselves. What more relevant myth could any modern writer find? As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life.

A S Byatt's fairy tales and fables are among the best-loved features of her fiction. Innumerable listeners have asked for the two marvellous fairy tales in Possession - 'The Glass Coffin' and 'Gode's Tale' of the Breton Naie des Trepasses - to be published separately. Here they take their place with three other stories with medieval and oriental settings.

It is 1968, and Frederica Potter is surprised to find herself embarking on a new career in television. While she endeavours to navigate this fast-paced and occasionally bewildering industry, her lover John takes up a post working with a pair of unusual scientists. Yet in Frederica’s home county of Yorkshire, tumultuous events are unfolding. Soon her future, and that of the people closest to her, begins to look rather different.

After her husband becomes violent, Frederica Potter flees with her young son to London. There, she secures a teaching position in an art school and finds herself surrounded by painters and poets with dreams of rebellion. Then Frederica meets Jude Mason, the strange and charismatic author of a wildly controversial novel. When her husband files for divorce and Jude becomes the target of a high-profile court case, Frederica’s life threatens to spiral out of control.