"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..." Ancient, beautiful Manderley, between the rose garden and the sea, is the county's showpiece. Rebecca made it so - even a year after her death, Rebecca's influence still rules there. How can Maxim de Winter's shy new bride ever fill her place or escape her vital shadow? A shadow that grows longer and darker as the brief summer fades, until, in a moment of climatic revelations, it threatens to eclipse Manderley and its inhabitants completely...

Sylish, shimmering and amoral, Sagan's tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera was her masterpiece, published when she was just eighteen. However, this frank and explicit novella was considered too daring for 1950s Britain, and sexual scenes were removed for the English publication. Now this fresh and accurate new translation presents the uncensored text in full for the first time. Bonjour Tristesse tells the story of Cecile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. In A Certain Smile, which is also included in this volume, Dominique, a young woman bored with her lover, begins an encounter with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways. Both novellas have been freshly translated by Heather Lloyd and include an introduction by Rachel Cusk. Heather Lloyd has also written a new afterword for this edition. Francoise Sagan was born in France in 1935. Bonjour tristesse (1954), published when she was just 19, became a succes de scandale and even earned its author a papal denunciation.

A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life. Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no she takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a highclass prostitute”). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise—and ours—her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world. Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body and unrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insist on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't aways always grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potential of our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.

Sylish, shimmering and amoral, Sagan's tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera was her masterpiece, published when she was just eighteen. However, this frank and explicit novella was considered too daring for 1950s Britain, and sexual scenes were removed for the English publication. Now this fresh and accurate new translation presents the uncensored text in full for the first time. Bonjour Tristesse tells the story of Cecile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. In A Certain Smile, which is also included in this volume, Dominique, a young woman bored with her lover, begins an encounter with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways. Both novellas have been freshly translated by Heather Lloyd and include an introduction by Rachel Cusk. Heather Lloyd has also written a new afterword for this edition. Francoise Sagan was born in France in 1935. Bonjour tristesse (1954), published when she was just 19, became a succes de scandale and even earned its author a papal denunciation.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

"Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women — the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up — a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city's obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable. The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.

Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title). Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world … suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, … but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima. Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston