Secondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2688
Secondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Book
Eighteen novels, stories, poems, and anthologies of considerable range — from the cold war carnival of Wu Ming's 54 to the quiet devastation of Jacquelyn Mitchard's first Oprah Book Club pick, from Mervyn Peake's absurdist comedy on the island of Sark to Will Self's gleefully transgressive twin novellas, from Banjo Paterson's foundational Australian verse to a Granta fiction special and an anthology of the best new American voices of 2001. Geoff Page and Nayantara Sahgal sit alongside Raymond Khoury's international thriller, Marianne Fredriksson's Swedish literary fiction, and DBC Pierre's endorsement of a "brilliant comic elegy for a disappearing world." A genuinely eclectic and rewarding collection.
1. 54 — Wu Ming The Italian collective who gave us Q sets their sprawling Cold War novel in 1954 — Cary Grant, a Rimini hotel, a Yugoslavian partisan, and the birth of television culture all somehow converge. Wu Ming writes history as carnival, and there is nothing else quite like it.
2. The World from Rough Stones — Malcolm Macdonald A Victorian saga built around the building of the railways — ambition, labour, class, and the transformation of England told through the lives of those who drove the tunnels and laid the tracks. Macdonald writes with the sweep and human detail that the great Victorian novelists brought to industrial history.
3. Remember Me... — Melvyn Bragg Memory, love, and the way the past inhabits the present — Bragg writes with the warmth and psychological depth that have made him one of the most trusted voices in British fiction. A quiet, moving novel from an author at his most personal.
4. Sanctuary — Raymond Khoury From the author of the number one international bestseller The Last Templar — an ancient symbol surfaces in the modern world, and the secret it guards has been kept for centuries at considerable cost. Khoury writes historical conspiracy thrillers with real pace and genuine research.
5. Love in the Country — Rebecca Shaw Warm, community-rooted English rural fiction from the author of The Village Green Affair — Shaw writes about the pleasures and complications of country life with affection and wit, and this is the genre done exactly as it should be.
6. The Deep End of the Ocean — Jacquelyn Mitchard The first novel ever selected for Oprah's Book Club — a child is abducted and found nine years later, and the family must now live with the consequences of recovery as well as loss. Mitchard writes about grief and reunion with unflinching honesty and considerable power.
7. Amber Road — Boyd Anderson As an empire is swept away, a young woman's world is ripped apart — Anderson writes sweeping historical fiction with real atmospheric power and a strong sense of the human cost of the forces that reshape civilisations.
8. Benton's Conviction — Geoff Page Australian poet Geoff Page turns to prose fiction — a crime or moral reckoning at the centre of a novel that brings the precision and economy of verse to the longer form. Quietly gripping and completely distinctive.
9. Mr Pye — Mervyn Peake The author of the Gormenghast trilogy turns to comedy — a prim, evangelical Englishman goes to the island of Sark and starts performing miracles, with increasingly alarming consequences. Peake's imagination is as strange and original here as in his Gothic masterwork, and the result is one of the funniest and most unsettling novels about goodness ever written.
10. The Man from Snowy River & Other Verses — A.B. Paterson The essential Banjo Paterson — The Man from Snowy River, Clancy of the Overflow, The Ballad of the Drover, and all the other poems that shaped the Australian imagination and still ring in the memory of anyone who encountered them young. An Australian Classic in every sense.
11. Mistaken Identity — Nayantara Sahgal Nayantara Sahgal — niece of Nehru, one of India's most distinguished literary novelists — at her most acerbic and politically engaged. Sahgal writes about power, identity, and Indian society with the authority of someone who has watched it from the inside for decades.
12. The Old Country — Sam North "A brilliant comic elegy for a disappearing world" — DBC Pierre. North writes about England and Englishness with the combination of affection and devastation that only a true insider can manage. Underread and overdue for discovery.
13. Timber — John F. Brennan A novel rooted in landscape, labour, and the lives of those who work the land — Brennan writes with a novelist's eye for the texture of physical work and the communities it creates and destroys.
14. Best New American Voices 2001 — ed. Charles Baxter "A masterful collection of fiction by today's most innovative and original new writers" — the annual anthology that introduced a generation of American voices. Guest editor Charles Baxter (Feast of Love) selects with real discrimination, and this edition captures a remarkable moment in American short fiction.
15. Inge & Mira — Marianne Fredriksson From the bestselling Swedish author of Hannas Daughters — a novel about two women, their friendship, and the long arc of lives lived in parallel. Fredriksson writes about the inner lives of women across time with the quiet power that made her an international phenomenon.
16. Cock & Bull — Will Self Two novellas — Cock (a woman grows a penis) and Bull (a man grows a womb) — Will Self at his most provocative, most formally inventive, and most darkly funny. No one else in British fiction would have written this, and no one else could have made it this good.
17. Instances of the Number 3 — Salley Vickers A widow begins noticing the number three appearing everywhere — in coincidences, connections, and the unexpected geometry of grief and recovery. Vickers writes novels that look simple and aren't, and this quiet, luminous book is one of her very best.
18. Granta: New Fiction Special A Granta anthology dedicated entirely to new fiction — the magazine that has consistently been the best gauge of where literary fiction is going, gathering the writers who define each new generation before anyone else knows their names.
Genre: Fiction
Secondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Book
Eighteen novels, stories, poems, and anthologies of considerable range — from the cold war carnival of Wu Ming's 54 to the quiet devastation of Jacquelyn Mitchard's first Oprah Book Club pick, from Mervyn Peake's absurdist comedy on the island of Sark to Will Self's gleefully transgressive twin novellas, from Banjo Paterson's foundational Australian verse to a Granta fiction special and an anthology of the best new American voices of 2001. Geoff Page and Nayantara Sahgal sit alongside Raymond Khoury's international thriller, Marianne Fredriksson's Swedish literary fiction, and DBC Pierre's endorsement of a "brilliant comic elegy for a disappearing world." A genuinely eclectic and rewarding collection.
1. 54 — Wu Ming The Italian collective who gave us Q sets their sprawling Cold War novel in 1954 — Cary Grant, a Rimini hotel, a Yugoslavian partisan, and the birth of television culture all somehow converge. Wu Ming writes history as carnival, and there is nothing else quite like it.
2. The World from Rough Stones — Malcolm Macdonald A Victorian saga built around the building of the railways — ambition, labour, class, and the transformation of England told through the lives of those who drove the tunnels and laid the tracks. Macdonald writes with the sweep and human detail that the great Victorian novelists brought to industrial history.
3. Remember Me... — Melvyn Bragg Memory, love, and the way the past inhabits the present — Bragg writes with the warmth and psychological depth that have made him one of the most trusted voices in British fiction. A quiet, moving novel from an author at his most personal.
4. Sanctuary — Raymond Khoury From the author of the number one international bestseller The Last Templar — an ancient symbol surfaces in the modern world, and the secret it guards has been kept for centuries at considerable cost. Khoury writes historical conspiracy thrillers with real pace and genuine research.
5. Love in the Country — Rebecca Shaw Warm, community-rooted English rural fiction from the author of The Village Green Affair — Shaw writes about the pleasures and complications of country life with affection and wit, and this is the genre done exactly as it should be.
6. The Deep End of the Ocean — Jacquelyn Mitchard The first novel ever selected for Oprah's Book Club — a child is abducted and found nine years later, and the family must now live with the consequences of recovery as well as loss. Mitchard writes about grief and reunion with unflinching honesty and considerable power.
7. Amber Road — Boyd Anderson As an empire is swept away, a young woman's world is ripped apart — Anderson writes sweeping historical fiction with real atmospheric power and a strong sense of the human cost of the forces that reshape civilisations.
8. Benton's Conviction — Geoff Page Australian poet Geoff Page turns to prose fiction — a crime or moral reckoning at the centre of a novel that brings the precision and economy of verse to the longer form. Quietly gripping and completely distinctive.
9. Mr Pye — Mervyn Peake The author of the Gormenghast trilogy turns to comedy — a prim, evangelical Englishman goes to the island of Sark and starts performing miracles, with increasingly alarming consequences. Peake's imagination is as strange and original here as in his Gothic masterwork, and the result is one of the funniest and most unsettling novels about goodness ever written.
10. The Man from Snowy River & Other Verses — A.B. Paterson The essential Banjo Paterson — The Man from Snowy River, Clancy of the Overflow, The Ballad of the Drover, and all the other poems that shaped the Australian imagination and still ring in the memory of anyone who encountered them young. An Australian Classic in every sense.
11. Mistaken Identity — Nayantara Sahgal Nayantara Sahgal — niece of Nehru, one of India's most distinguished literary novelists — at her most acerbic and politically engaged. Sahgal writes about power, identity, and Indian society with the authority of someone who has watched it from the inside for decades.
12. The Old Country — Sam North "A brilliant comic elegy for a disappearing world" — DBC Pierre. North writes about England and Englishness with the combination of affection and devastation that only a true insider can manage. Underread and overdue for discovery.
13. Timber — John F. Brennan A novel rooted in landscape, labour, and the lives of those who work the land — Brennan writes with a novelist's eye for the texture of physical work and the communities it creates and destroys.
14. Best New American Voices 2001 — ed. Charles Baxter "A masterful collection of fiction by today's most innovative and original new writers" — the annual anthology that introduced a generation of American voices. Guest editor Charles Baxter (Feast of Love) selects with real discrimination, and this edition captures a remarkable moment in American short fiction.
15. Inge & Mira — Marianne Fredriksson From the bestselling Swedish author of Hannas Daughters — a novel about two women, their friendship, and the long arc of lives lived in parallel. Fredriksson writes about the inner lives of women across time with the quiet power that made her an international phenomenon.
16. Cock & Bull — Will Self Two novellas — Cock (a woman grows a penis) and Bull (a man grows a womb) — Will Self at his most provocative, most formally inventive, and most darkly funny. No one else in British fiction would have written this, and no one else could have made it this good.
17. Instances of the Number 3 — Salley Vickers A widow begins noticing the number three appearing everywhere — in coincidences, connections, and the unexpected geometry of grief and recovery. Vickers writes novels that look simple and aren't, and this quiet, luminous book is one of her very best.
18. Granta: New Fiction Special A Granta anthology dedicated entirely to new fiction — the magazine that has consistently been the best gauge of where literary fiction is going, gathering the writers who define each new generation before anyone else knows their names.