Secondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2677
Secondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Book
Nineteen novels, stories, poems, and essays of genuine literary ambition. Jonathan Franzen at full stretch, Colleen McCullough doing something you won't expect, Tim Powers reimagining the Pre-Raphaelites as a vampire story, David Guterson following up Snow Falling on Cedars, David Mamet turning his dramatic intelligence to prose fiction, and Morris West asking what a Pope might think if he came back from open-heart surgery with a changed soul. There's a novel about the only woman to ascend the Dragon Throne of China, a Hollywood blacklist story, and Tony Harrison turning the medieval mystery plays into something urgently contemporary. One of the richest boxes in this collection.
1. Purity — Jonathan Franzen A young woman called Pip Tyler searches for her absent father and falls into the orbit of a Julian Assange-like figure running a radical transparency organisation. Franzen weaves Cold War East Germany, internet-age idealism, and several decades of American family dysfunction into one of his most ambitious novels. Unmissable for readers who take contemporary fiction seriously.
2. The Expectant Mariner — Shirley Deane A quietly compelling novel of waiting, longing, and the particular emotional landscape of those left behind when someone goes to sea — Deane writes about absence and anticipation with real literary sensitivity.
3. Green Dragon, White Tiger — Annette Motley The only woman ever to ascend the Dragon Throne of China — Wu Zetian, concubine turned Empress, one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. Motley brings her to life with sweep and sensory richness in a novel that does justice to one of history's most remarkable stories.
4. The Truth About Her — Jacqueline Maley Australian journalist and author Maley's novel about a journalist who writes an obituary — and discovers that the act of defining someone else's life has consequences she never anticipated. Sharp, contemporary, and quietly devastating.
5. China Saga — C.Y. Lee A sweeping multi-generational saga of China across its most turbulent century — from the author of The Flower Drum Song, writing about his homeland with the intimacy and sweep of someone who carries its history in his bones.
6. On, Off — Colleen McCullough "The chilling new novel from Australia's greatest storyteller" — McCullough turns her formidable gifts to crime fiction with the same authority she brought to ancient Rome and colonial Australia. Darker and more unsettling than anything her fans might expect, and all the more gripping for it.
7. Night for Day — Patrick Flanery Hollywood in the blacklist era — an ageing screenwriter confronting what was lost when fear drove the industry to eat itself. Flanery writes about America's capacity for self-betrayal with the perspective of an outsider who sees it clearly.
8. All the Beggars Riding — Lucy Caldwell A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime — a woman whose father has died discovers he had a secret second family in London, and must reconstruct a life she thought she knew. Caldwell is one of the finest Northern Irish writers of her generation, and this novel is a model of emotional precision.
9. Hide Me Among the Graves — Tim Powers The Pre-Raphaelites and vampires in Victorian London — Powers takes the biographical facts of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and constructs a supernatural thriller of extraordinary ingenuity around them. Peter Straub counted Powers among the writers he re-read obsessively, and this novel explains why.
10. Candor & Perversion — Roger Shattuck The author of Forbidden Knowledge on literature, education, and the arts — Shattuck is one of the great American critics, and these essays are as rigorous and readable as criticism gets. Essential for anyone interested in what literature is for and what it costs.
11. Woman Enters Left — Jessica Brockmole Hollywood's Golden Age — a screenwriter, an actress, and the stories that shape and misshape both of them. "Witty, poignant and historically vivid" — Brockmole writes the era with real glamour and real intelligence about what the dream factory actually did to the people inside it.
12. Lazarus — Morris West A Pope undergoes open-heart surgery and returns from the operating table changed — with a vision of the Church that the Church itself will not accept. West (The Shoes of the Fisherman) writes about faith, power, and institutional resistance with the authority of a lifelong Catholic and a novelist's understanding of human nature.
13. The Truest Pleasure — Robert Morgan From the author of Gap Creek — an Appalachian marriage, a wife's religious devotion, and a husband who cannot share it. Morgan writes about the American mountain South with documentary precision and real emotional depth. The New York Times called it "marvellously vivid."
14. The Trilogy of Two — Juman Malouf Twin girls in a magical circus at the edge of the world, and a mystery that reaches further than either of them knows. Philip Pullman called it "vivid and attractive" — a children's fantasy with the assurance of an author who knows exactly what she's doing.
15. The Mysteries — Tony Harrison The great poet dramatist's version of the medieval mystery plays — Harrison brings the York, Wakefield, and Chester cycles into the present with the same formal brilliance and working-class energy that defines all his best work. One of the most important British theatrical texts of the twentieth century.
16. A Commonplace Killing — Siân Busby Post-war London, 1946 — a woman's body is found and a detective investigates in a city still living in the wreckage. The Sunday Times called it "brilliantly evoked." Busby died before this novel found its readers; it deserves all of them.
17. The Village — David Mamet The playwright and filmmaker's novel about a rural New England community — Mamet brings his ear for the unspoken, his eye for power, and his instinct for the dramatic to prose fiction with results the Daily Telegraph called "highly accomplished."
18. Truce — Joanna Murray-Smith "A sensual lyric about family life and sexual love set in the brooding experience of war and exile" — Murray-Smith is one of Australia's finest playwrights, and this novel carries the same compressed emotional intensity and ear for language that makes her stage work so powerful.
19. The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind — David Guterson Short stories from the author of Snow Falling on Cedars — Guterson's lesser-known collection, written before his debut made him famous, showing the same extraordinary feel for landscape, silence, and the things people don't say to each other. A quiet masterpiece.
Genre: Fiction
Secondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Book
Nineteen novels, stories, poems, and essays of genuine literary ambition. Jonathan Franzen at full stretch, Colleen McCullough doing something you won't expect, Tim Powers reimagining the Pre-Raphaelites as a vampire story, David Guterson following up Snow Falling on Cedars, David Mamet turning his dramatic intelligence to prose fiction, and Morris West asking what a Pope might think if he came back from open-heart surgery with a changed soul. There's a novel about the only woman to ascend the Dragon Throne of China, a Hollywood blacklist story, and Tony Harrison turning the medieval mystery plays into something urgently contemporary. One of the richest boxes in this collection.
1. Purity — Jonathan Franzen A young woman called Pip Tyler searches for her absent father and falls into the orbit of a Julian Assange-like figure running a radical transparency organisation. Franzen weaves Cold War East Germany, internet-age idealism, and several decades of American family dysfunction into one of his most ambitious novels. Unmissable for readers who take contemporary fiction seriously.
2. The Expectant Mariner — Shirley Deane A quietly compelling novel of waiting, longing, and the particular emotional landscape of those left behind when someone goes to sea — Deane writes about absence and anticipation with real literary sensitivity.
3. Green Dragon, White Tiger — Annette Motley The only woman ever to ascend the Dragon Throne of China — Wu Zetian, concubine turned Empress, one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. Motley brings her to life with sweep and sensory richness in a novel that does justice to one of history's most remarkable stories.
4. The Truth About Her — Jacqueline Maley Australian journalist and author Maley's novel about a journalist who writes an obituary — and discovers that the act of defining someone else's life has consequences she never anticipated. Sharp, contemporary, and quietly devastating.
5. China Saga — C.Y. Lee A sweeping multi-generational saga of China across its most turbulent century — from the author of The Flower Drum Song, writing about his homeland with the intimacy and sweep of someone who carries its history in his bones.
6. On, Off — Colleen McCullough "The chilling new novel from Australia's greatest storyteller" — McCullough turns her formidable gifts to crime fiction with the same authority she brought to ancient Rome and colonial Australia. Darker and more unsettling than anything her fans might expect, and all the more gripping for it.
7. Night for Day — Patrick Flanery Hollywood in the blacklist era — an ageing screenwriter confronting what was lost when fear drove the industry to eat itself. Flanery writes about America's capacity for self-betrayal with the perspective of an outsider who sees it clearly.
8. All the Beggars Riding — Lucy Caldwell A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime — a woman whose father has died discovers he had a secret second family in London, and must reconstruct a life she thought she knew. Caldwell is one of the finest Northern Irish writers of her generation, and this novel is a model of emotional precision.
9. Hide Me Among the Graves — Tim Powers The Pre-Raphaelites and vampires in Victorian London — Powers takes the biographical facts of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and constructs a supernatural thriller of extraordinary ingenuity around them. Peter Straub counted Powers among the writers he re-read obsessively, and this novel explains why.
10. Candor & Perversion — Roger Shattuck The author of Forbidden Knowledge on literature, education, and the arts — Shattuck is one of the great American critics, and these essays are as rigorous and readable as criticism gets. Essential for anyone interested in what literature is for and what it costs.
11. Woman Enters Left — Jessica Brockmole Hollywood's Golden Age — a screenwriter, an actress, and the stories that shape and misshape both of them. "Witty, poignant and historically vivid" — Brockmole writes the era with real glamour and real intelligence about what the dream factory actually did to the people inside it.
12. Lazarus — Morris West A Pope undergoes open-heart surgery and returns from the operating table changed — with a vision of the Church that the Church itself will not accept. West (The Shoes of the Fisherman) writes about faith, power, and institutional resistance with the authority of a lifelong Catholic and a novelist's understanding of human nature.
13. The Truest Pleasure — Robert Morgan From the author of Gap Creek — an Appalachian marriage, a wife's religious devotion, and a husband who cannot share it. Morgan writes about the American mountain South with documentary precision and real emotional depth. The New York Times called it "marvellously vivid."
14. The Trilogy of Two — Juman Malouf Twin girls in a magical circus at the edge of the world, and a mystery that reaches further than either of them knows. Philip Pullman called it "vivid and attractive" — a children's fantasy with the assurance of an author who knows exactly what she's doing.
15. The Mysteries — Tony Harrison The great poet dramatist's version of the medieval mystery plays — Harrison brings the York, Wakefield, and Chester cycles into the present with the same formal brilliance and working-class energy that defines all his best work. One of the most important British theatrical texts of the twentieth century.
16. A Commonplace Killing — Siân Busby Post-war London, 1946 — a woman's body is found and a detective investigates in a city still living in the wreckage. The Sunday Times called it "brilliantly evoked." Busby died before this novel found its readers; it deserves all of them.
17. The Village — David Mamet The playwright and filmmaker's novel about a rural New England community — Mamet brings his ear for the unspoken, his eye for power, and his instinct for the dramatic to prose fiction with results the Daily Telegraph called "highly accomplished."
18. Truce — Joanna Murray-Smith "A sensual lyric about family life and sexual love set in the brooding experience of war and exile" — Murray-Smith is one of Australia's finest playwrights, and this novel carries the same compressed emotional intensity and ear for language that makes her stage work so powerful.
19. The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind — David Guterson Short stories from the author of Snow Falling on Cedars — Guterson's lesser-known collection, written before his debut made him famous, showing the same extraordinary feel for landscape, silence, and the things people don't say to each other. A quiet masterpiece.