Best Sellers - Individual titles

The first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist, which was almost single-handedly responsible for creating the Bronte myth Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte...

Now with a new chapter, On Being Ninety- a memoir of ageing, memory, and time, written by one of the twentieth century's greatest writers at the age of eighty 'The...

The Sunday Times no. 1 memoir now in paperback The Pigeon Tunnel, John le Carre's memoir and his first work of non-fiction, is a thrilling journey into the worlds of...

Part biography, part detective story- the extraordinary life of the eccentric writer Frederick Baron Corvo One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar novel called Hadrian the Seventh and,...

'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among...

She was 'amused, cynical, ironic, loving, gay, ferocious, cold, ardent but never gentle'. She was a whirlwind. She created around her the atmosphere of a Court at which her friends...

Whatever happened to him actually outshines anything I've had my James Bond do. - Ian Fleming When the real James Bond published his 1936 landmark book, Birds of the West...

Oxford thought it was at war. And then it was.     After the horrors of the First World War, Oxford looked like an Arcadia - a dream world -...

'America's Literary Legends' is a concise, yet truly distinctive and comprehensive review of 50 authors and poets who shaped American literature from the 1600s through the mid-twentieth century. Fully grounded...

Oxford thought it was at war. And then it was. After the horrors of the First World War, Oxford looked like an Arcadia - a dream world - from which...

Probably the greatest British novelist of his generation, Graham Greene's own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime, or the Whisky...

Probably the greatest British novelist of his generation, Graham Greene's own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime, or the Whisky...

'Sleepless has changed how I feel about sleep . . . I was captivated' The Times, Book of the Week'This book will inspire you to get up, light a candle,...

The captivating letters by the most idiosyncratic, witty and irrepressible of the notorious Mitford sisters.Here's what readers are saying:'It is both laugh-out-loud funny and enthralling' 'A wonderful record of a...

At the age of seventeen, Rebecca Mead read Middlemarch for the first time, and has read it again every five years since, each time interpreting and discovering it anew. In...

"The articles and columns in The Scandal of the Century demonstrate that his forthright, lightly ironical voice just seemed to be there, right from the start . . . He's...

Winner of the Crime Fest HRF Keating Award'Not merely the conclusive homage to a compulsively fascinating character, but an insightful study into the biographical process itself' Nicholas Shakespeare'Now that he...

The remarkable life of Australia's greatest storyteller 'A detailed and sympathetic account ... fascinating' - The AustralianA.B. 'Banjo' Paterson is rightly recognised as Australia's greatest storyteller and most celebrated poet,...

'Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening' wrote George Orwell in 1940. Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell planted in his cottage...

From the Jazz Age through the Kennedy administration, Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) stood at the center of the American cultural scene. A champion of the young Ernest Hemingway, a loyal friend...

Edward Thomas was perhaps the most beguiling and influential of the war poets. This haunting account of his final five years follows him from his beloved English countryside to the...

Orwell: A Man of Our Time offers a vivid portrait of the man behind the writings, and places him and his work at the centre of the current political landscape....

A rollicking, hilarious stagecoach journey across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains was just the beginning of a nearly six-year-long odyssey that took Samuel Clemens from St. Joseph,...

A masterful and definitive biography of one of the most misunderstood and controversial writers in Russian literature.Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize...

'A beautiful, deeply philosophical book about reading as a form of existential consolation' Literary Review'Acute and tender . . . alive with discovery and desire' Observer'A meditation, by turns glorious...

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was the greatest writer in a Britain that ruled the largest empire the world has known, yet he was always a controversial figure, as deeply hated as...

NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand...

The acclaimed first English-language biography of the great European novelist and journalist, Joseph Roth, author of The Radetzky March, a writer who captured life in Europe between the wars like...

"An enthralling, heartening study of a man of unflagging interest in life" Independent"A thoroughly researched biography" New York Review of Books"Provides readers of English with a perfect introduction to the...

In the long run, we're all dead. But for some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been...

Everyone knows Frank Herbert's Dune. This science fiction epic combines politics human evolution and ecology and has captured the imagination of generations of readers. It is one of the most...

Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright. Ever since he took the theatre of Elizabethan...

A Book of the Year in The Times, Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Bookseller and at Waterstones'He understands only the women he invents - the others not at all' Thomas Hardy...

'A beautiful, deeply philosophical book about reading as a form of existential consolation' Literary Review'Acute and tender . . . alive with discovery and desire' Observer'A meditation, by turns glorious...

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She...

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She...

An illuminating new biography of one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop's friend James Merrill once observed that "Elizabeth had more talent for...

With his recent theatrical success, THE PLAY WHAT I WROTE, Braben shows that the audience for the spirit of the incomparable Eric and Ernie is just as alive today as...

Over seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen...

Dylan Thomas's letters bring the fascinating and tempestuous poet and his times to life in a way that no biography can.The letters begin in the poet's schooldays and end just...

'This is the biography - truthful, sympathetic and thorough - that Coward deserves'DAILY TELEGRAPHThe voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when...

Over seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen...

With his recent theatrical success, THE PLAY WHAT I WROTE, Braben shows that the audience for the spirit of the incomparable Eric and Ernie is just as alive today as...

Five years after his death, Stieg Larsson is best known as the author of the Millennium Trilogy, but during his career as a journalist he was a crucial protagonist in...

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She...

A memoir of politics and activism, from the bestselling and beloved author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS'A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman'...

'This is the biography - truthful, sympathetic and thorough - that Coward deserves'DAILY TELEGRAPHThe voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when...

'A brave process of healing and self reconstruction' Observer'Simply one of the best writers working today. Here's to family, to glamour, and to love' Nell Frizzell, author of The Panic...