{"product_id":"secondhand-literary-fiction-bargain-book-box-sp2776","title":"Secondhand Literary  Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2776","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSecondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Book Box — 18 Books\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eA rich and varied literary fiction collection with at least two titles that demand immediate attention. The signed copy of Victoria Gosling's \u003cem\u003eBliss \u0026amp; Blunder\u003c\/em\u003e — praised by both Marian Keyes and Sarah Waters, two writers who do not give endorsements lightly — is the sleeper find of the box and one of the most purely pleasurable debut novels of recent years. García Márquez's \u003cem\u003eOf Love and Other Demons\u003c\/em\u003e is the most literarily distinguished title here — a late masterwork from the Nobel laureate that A.S. Byatt called \"a tour de force.\" The Haddawy translation of \u003cem\u003eThe Arabian Nights\u003c\/em\u003e is the most unusual: not a novel but one of the foundational texts of world storytelling, in the finest scholarly translation available. Taylor Jenkins Reid and Graeme Simsion ensure the box has popular appeal alongside its literary ambitions, and Hilary Mantel's endorsement of Emma Chapman's debut is the kind of blurb that should not be ignored.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr class=\"border-border-200 border-t-0.5 my-3 mx-1.5\"\u003e\n\u003col class=\"[li_\u0026amp;]:mb-0 [li_\u0026amp;]:mt-1 [li_\u0026amp;]:gap-1 [\u0026amp;:not(:last-child)_ul]:pb-1 [\u0026amp;:not(:last-child)_ol]:pb-1 list-decimal flex flex-col gap-1 pl-8 mb-3\"\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eApe House\u003c\/em\u003e — Sara Gruen — Gruen's follow-up to \u003cem\u003eWater for Elephants\u003c\/em\u003e centres on a group of language-research bonobos who escape their lab and find themselves the unlikely stars of a reality television show. Gruen writes animals with the same emotional intelligence she brings to her human characters, and the satirical target — American media culture — is well chosen.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eOf Love and Other Demons\u003c\/em\u003e — Gabriel García Márquez — A young girl bitten by a rabid dog is confined to a convent, where a young priest is sent to oversee her exorcism — and falls catastrophically in love with her. A.S. Byatt called it \"brilliantly moving, a tour de force.\" Late García Márquez at his most concentrated and devastating: compact, beautiful, and haunted. A Nobel laureate working at full power.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Cloning of Joanna May\u003c\/em\u003e — Fay Weldon — Weldon is one of British fiction's great provocateurs, and this novel — in which a man discovers his ex-wife was cloned without her knowledge, producing four younger versions of her — is among her most inventively feminist and darkly comic. Written with the gleeful savagery and intellectual sharpness that made her the author of \u003cem\u003eThe Life and Loves of a She-Devil\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eLondon Bone and Other Stories\u003c\/em\u003e — Michael Moorcock — Moorcock is one of the most important and under-appreciated figures in British fiction, and this story collection — in which London itself becomes the subject — shows the breadth of his range, from satirical fable to psychological realism. The \u003cem\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c\/em\u003e called him \"a storyteller who can do the range of London voices.\"\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eMaybe in Another Life\u003c\/em\u003e — Taylor Jenkins Reid — Reid is one of the most widely read contemporary women's fiction writers, and this novel — in which a single decision on a single night splits into two parallel narratives of the life that follows — is a perfect introduction to her gifts: propulsive plotting, genuine emotional warmth, and the kind of reading experience \u003cem\u003ePeople\u003c\/em\u003e magazine accurately described as \"love wins.\"\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Best of Adam Sharp\u003c\/em\u003e — Graeme Simsion — Simsion is the Melbourne author of \u003cem\u003eThe Rosie Project\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe Best of Adam Sharp\u003c\/em\u003e is his most personal and musically saturated novel — following a man whose comfortable middle age is disrupted by a message from the woman he loved twenty-five years earlier. Text Publishing. Warm, intelligent, and considerably more emotionally complex than its premise suggests.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Arabian Nights\u003c\/em\u003e — translated by Husain Haddawy — Haddawy's translation, based on the authoritative Mahdi text, is the scholarly gold standard — restoring the sophistication, eroticism, and narrative complexity that bowdlerised Victorian translations obscured for a century. Not a novel but the source of novels: one of the foundational texts of world storytelling.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Book of Unknown Americans\u003c\/em\u003e — Cristina Henríquez — A novel told in multiple voices from a Panama City apartment building populated by Latin American immigrants navigating their new American lives. Ruth Ozeki called it \"profound and unexpected,\" and it is: a quietly devastating examination of aspiration, loss, and what it costs to cross a border in search of a better life.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Divorcées\u003c\/em\u003e — Rowan Beaird — A debut praised by Rebecca Makkai as \"a delicious literary page-turner from a fierce new voice.\" Set in a 1950s Nevada divorce ranch — where women waited out their six-week residency requirements — Beaird has found an extraordinary historical setting and used it to explore freedom, desire, and the price women pay for independence.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers\u003c\/em\u003e — Thomas Mullen — A Depression-era gangster novel with a supernatural twist: two bank robbers keep waking up after being shot dead. Mullen uses the conceit to examine the mythology of American outlaw heroism with real intelligence and narrative invention. Atmospheric, morally probing, and compulsively readable.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Dandelion Clock\u003c\/em\u003e — Guy Burt — Burt is the author of \u003cem\u003eAfter the Hole\u003c\/em\u003e, and brings the same gift for psychological suspense and precisely observed English childhood to this novel of memory, friendship, and the secrets that endure from childhood into adulthood. The \u003cem\u003eGuardian\u003c\/em\u003e called it \"ambitious and substantial... brilliantly conjured.\"\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eImmigrant, Montana\u003c\/em\u003e — Amitava Kumar — A literary novel following an Indian student through his American education and love affairs in the 1980s and 1990s, told with the essayistic intelligence and autobiographical intimacy of a writer who is also one of the most perceptive observers of the Indian diaspora experience. Faber.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eAn Exciting and Vivid Inner Life\u003c\/em\u003e — Paul Dalla Rosa — Short stories from one of Australian fiction's most striking new voices, praised by Ronnie Scott as \"so funny, dazzling, deep and dark.\" Dalla Rosa writes contemporary Australian life — its anxieties, its absurdities, its unexpected tenderness — with a precision and wit that announces a significant talent.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eA Girl Could Stand Up\u003c\/em\u003e — Leslie Marshall — Edmund White called it \"the best first novel I've read in years\" and named Marshall \"the Homer of dysfunctional family life\" — praise that is extravagant and, from a writer of White's critical standing, entirely serious. A debut of remarkable assurance and dark comic intelligence.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eBliss \u0026amp; Blunder\u003c\/em\u003e — Victoria Gosling — \u003cstrong\u003eSigned by the author.\u003c\/strong\u003e Marian Keyes called the writing \"jaw-droppingly brilliant\" and Sarah Waters found it \"engrossing, beguiling.\" Both endorsements are warranted. A debut of extraordinary richness and emotional force, from a writer whose talent is evident on every page. The signed copy makes this the most collectable title in the box.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eHow to Be a Good Wife\u003c\/em\u003e — Emma Chapman — Hilary Mantel praised this debut as showing \"insight and emotional power\" — and Mantel's judgement of women's psychological fiction was as reliable as any in contemporary literature. Chapman's novel follows a wife who begins to question whether her perfect domestic life conceals something she has been forced to forget.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eNot That Sort of Girl\u003c\/em\u003e — Mary Wesley — Wesley published her first novel at seventy and became one of Britain's most beloved novelists, celebrated for her frank, funny, and deeply knowing portrayals of love, class, and sex across the twentieth century. \u003cem\u003eThe Times\u003c\/em\u003e called this novel \"an idiosyncratic mixture of love story and social comedy, full of jokes, sex and twists.\" Quintessential Wesley.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Miracles of Santo Fico\u003c\/em\u003e — D.L. Smith — A novel set in a small, faded Italian village — charming, gently comic, and concerned with the small miracles of ordinary life, lost faith, and the possibility of starting again. For readers who want their fiction sun-warmed and humane.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ol\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48767269044443,"sku":"SP2776","price":110.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/IMG_0691.jpg?v=1778626126","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/secondhand-literary-fiction-bargain-book-box-sp2776","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}