In 1947, Kindaichi is consulted by 20-something Mineko Tsubaki. Her father, Hidesuke, a flautist and composer, disappeared the previous spring, and his corpse was found six weeks later. The official verdict was that Hidesuke poisoned himself, but Mineko and her mother, who believe the corpse was misidentified, suspect he may still be alive. Kindaichi agrees to attend a divination session intended to summon the musician's spirit and confirm his demise, during which another member of the Tsubaki household is murdered. Now saddled with two cases, Kindaichi must suss out Tsubaki family secrets to prevent even more carnage.
A new edition of this classic Zweig story - an epic chess match on a transatlantic liner during WW2 unearths a story of persecution and obsession.
A new selection of Melville's most electrifying stories, in a beautiful Pushkin Collection edition'Some of the most brilliant stories of his or any other century' Philip Hoare, author of LeviathanHerman Melville produced some of the most singular, enigmatic stories in American literature. From surreally funny tales of office life to claustrophobic accounts of obscure tensions at sea, his darkly modern sensibility produced works of unparalleled narrative inventiveness.A lawyer hires a new copyist, who begins to exhibit a strange, confounding resistance to work. A cynical lightning-rod salesman plies his trade by exploiting fears in stormy weather. After boarding a beleaguered Spanish slave ship, a cheerful American trader is repeatedly struck by paralyzing unease as figures move in the shadows. These are stories of unsettling ironies and absurd humour, where nothing is as it first appears.
Masterful stories of faith and superstition from a much-loved Russian author, in English for the first time'A magnificent edition of the works of a writer who deserves her seat at the top table of Russian authors' Sara Wheeler, Wall Street JournalThese stories conjure a vanished Russia, where Orthodox Christianity coexists with the shapeshifters and house spirits of ancient folk belief. Celebrated for her sublime wit and graceful style, Teffi here plumbs the darker aspects of psychology, infusing tales of domestic conflict with the occult spirituality that thrived in the country of her youth.A young girl, haunted by the sinister sound of a church bell, resolves to become first a brigand, then a saint. A reluctant participant in a pilgrimage to the Solovetsky Islands has a shatteringly profound experience. A recently married couple's relationship becomes strained as they each silently nurse the fear that their maid is a witch. By turns playful and profound, solemn and drily sceptical, these tales of other worlds precisely illuminate human desires, fears and failings.
A selection of the finest stories by this female Chekhov, Teffi's genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny - a wry, scathing observer of society - she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtlety and depth of character. There are stories here from her own life (as a child, going to meet Tolstoy to plead for the life of War and Peace's Prince Bolkonsky, or, much later, her strange, charged meetings with the already-legendary Rasputin). There are stories of society, its members held together by mutual repulsion. There are stories of people misunderstanding each other or misrepresenting themselves. And throughout there is a sly, sardonic wit and a deep, compelling intelligence. Teffi was a phenomenally popular writer in pre-revolutionary Russia - a favourite of Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. She was born in 1872 into a prominent St Petersburg family and emigrated from Bolshevik Russia in 1919. She eventually settled in Paris, where she became an important figure in the literary scene, and where she lived until her death in 1952. A master of the short form, in her lifetime Teffi published countless stories, plays and feuilletons. After her death, she was gradually forgotten, but the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about her rediscovery by Russian readers. Now, nearly a century after her emigration, she once again enjoys critical acclaim and a wide readership in her motherland.
An offbeat, blackly comic thriller from the author of You Were Never Really Here.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017. Sonja's over forty, and she's trying to move in the right direction. She's learning to drive. She's joined a meditation group. And she's attempting to reconnect with her sister. But Sonja would rather eat cake than meditate. Her driving instructor won't let her change gear. And her sister won't return her calls. Sonja's mind keeps wandering back to the dramatic landscapes of her childhood - the singing whooper swans, the endless sky, and getting lost barefoot in the rye fields - but how can she return to a place that she no longer recognises? And how can she escape the alienating streets of Copenhagen? Mirror, Shoulder, Signal is a poignant, sharp-witted tale of one woman's journey in search of herself when there's no one to ask for directions.
In the autumn of his days, a privy councillor contemplates his past, looking back at the key moments in his life. He remembers sharing a lodging with a professor and his wife and a close friendship is formed. The professor, however harbours a dark secret which changes both men forever.
BURNING SECRET is set in an Austrian sanatorium in the 1920's. A lonely twelve-year-old boy is befriended and becomes infatuated by a suave and mysterious baron who heartlessly brushes him aside to turn his seductive attentions to the boy's mother. Stefan Zweig, the author of Beware of Pity and Confusion provides the reader, in this newly available translation, with a study of childhood on the brink of adolescence and a boy's uncontrollable jealousy and feelings of betrayal.
The best fiction from across the Nordic region, selected and introduced by Sjon - Iceland's internationally renowned writer
The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) is one of the most famous navigators in history-he was the first man to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and led the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe, although he was killed en route in a battle in the Philippines. In this biography, Zweig brings to life the Age of Discovery by telling the tale of one of the era's most daring adventurers, whose astounding feats of navigation heralded the modern age.
The stories in this collection, by the iconic Polish writer Bruno Schulz, are tangled and suffused with mystery and wonder.Above the narrow, winding streets of a labyrinthine city, great flocks of birds obscure the sun.In dimly lit parlour rooms and sooty kitchens, hoards of cockroaches scuttle across floorboards and startle drowsy housemaids. In a sanatorium surrounded by forest, time bends and warps into disturbing new shapes.This rich new translation by Stanley Bill showcases Schulz's darkly modern sensibility, and his unmatched ability to transform the ordinary into the fantastical.GREAT WRITERS ON BRUNO SCHULZ'He wrote sometimes like Kafka, sometimes like Proust, and at times he succeeded in reaching depths that neither of them reached.' I. B. Singer'Schulz's verbal art strikes us -stuns us, even - with its overload of beauty' John Updike'Schulz redrafts the lines between fantasy and reality' Chris Power'I read Schulz's stories and felt the gush of life' David Grossman'One of the most original imaginations in modern Europe' Cynthia Ozick
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