Collins Modern Classics – serie

Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize and Pen Faulkner prize. Made into an Oscar-winning film, ‘The Hours’ is a daring and deeply affecting novel inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf.Exiled in Richmond in the 1920s, taken from her beloved Bloomsbury and watched by her husband Leonard, Virginia Woolf struggles to tame her rebellious mind and make a start on her new novel.In the brooding heat of 1940s Los Angeles, a young wife and mother yearns to escape the claustrophobia of suburban domesticity and read her precious copy of ‘Mrs Dalloway’.And in New York in the 1990s, Clarissa Vaughan steps out of her smart Greenwich Village apartment and goes shopping for flowers for the party she is giving in honour of her life-long friend Richard, an award-winning poet whose mind and body are being ravaged by AIDS.Michael Cunningham’s exquisite and deeply moving novel is a meditation on artistic behaviour, failure, love and madness. Moving effortlessly across the decades and between England and America, Cunningham’s elegant, haunting prose explores the pain and trauma of creativity and the immutable relationship between writer and reader.

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. ‘Maths is one of the purest forms of thought, and to outsiders mathematicians may seem almost otherworldly’ In 1963, schoolboy Andrew Wiles stumbled across the world’s greatest mathematical problem: Fermat’s Last Theorem. Unsolved for over 300 years, he dreamed of cracking it.Combining thrilling storytelling with a fascinating history of scientific discovery, Simon Singh uncovers how an Englishman, after years of secret toil, finally solved mathematics’ most challenging problem.Fermat’s Last Theorem is remarkable story of human endeavour, obsession and intellectual brilliance, sealing its reputation as a classic of popular science writing. ‘To read it is to realise that there is a world of beauty and intellectual challenge that is denied to 99.9 per cent of us who are not high-level mathematicians’The Times

**DREAM COUNT, the searing new bestselling novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is out now!** WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 'A delicious, important novel' THE TIMES'Alert, alive and gripping' INDEPENDENTIfemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria. In America, Ifemelu suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Meanwhile, Obinze plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, when they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion – for each other and for their homeland – they face the hardest decision of their lives.Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah is a literary masterpiece, and one of the defining books of the decade.'A love story for our time' VOGUE‘A brilliant novel: epic in scope, personal in resonance and with lots to say’ OBSERVER'A tour de force. Hugely impressive' MAIL ON SUNDAY

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. That girl didn’t want to die. She just wanted out of that house. She wanted out of that decorating scheme. The five Lisbon sisters – beautiful, eccentric and, now, gone – had always been a point of obsession for the entire neighbourhood.Although the boys that once loved them from afar have grown up, they remain determined to understand a tragedy that has defied explanation. The question persists – why did all five of the Lisbon girls take their own lives?This lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life announced the arrival of one of the greatest American novelists of the last thirty years. ‘A flare from my own secret world, all the inchoate longings and obsessions of being a teenager somehow rendered into book form’ Emma Cline, author of The Girls

A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking. One thing in my defence, not that it matters: I know what ‘nothing’ means, and keep on playing Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth’s life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, anesthetized to pain and pleasure, Wheth is a woman who has run out of both desires and motives – the epitome of a generation made ill by too much freedom.More than five decades after its original publication, Play it as it Lays remains a profoundly disturbing novel that ruthlessly dissects American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking.

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their daughter fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then she was placed on life support. Days later, the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner when John suffered a massive and fatal coronary.This powerful book is Didion’s ‘attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness’. The result is a personal yet universal portrait of marriage and life, in good times and bad, from one of the defining voices of American literature. ‘Beautiful and devastating … Didion has always been a precise, humane and meticulously truthful writer, but on the subject of death she becomes essential’ Zadie Smith

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. ‘You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug – especially when it’s waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eyes’ Roaring down the desert highway, Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo are seeking out the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, they confront casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans, in surreal, chemically enhanced encounters.Hilarious, hallucinogenic and subversive, Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel is a cult classic and a masterpiece of gonzo journalism. ‘A scorching epochal sensation’ Tom Wolfe

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and her truly unique family secret, born on the slopes of Mount Olympus and passed on through three generations.Growing up in 70s Michigan, Calliope’s special inheritance will turn her into Cal, the narrator of this intersex, inter-generational epic of immigrant life in 20th century America.Middlesex won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY is a heart-wrenching story of escape, love and comic-book heroes set in Prague, New York and the Arctic.One night in 1939, Josef Kavalier shuffles into his cousin Sam Clay’s cramped New York bedroom, his nerve-racking escape from Prague finally achieved. Little does he realise that this is the beginning of an extraordinary friendship and even more fruitful business partnership. Together, they create a comic strip called ‘The Escapist’, its superhero a Nazi-busting saviour who liberates the oppressed around the world. ‘The Escapist’ makes their fortune, but Joe can think of only one thing: how can he effect a real-life escape and free his family from the tyranny of Hitler?Michael Chabon’s exceptional novel is a thrilling tightrope walk between high comedy and bitter tragedy. In Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay he has created two unforgettable characters bound together by love, family and cartoons.

The rugged west coast of Ireland seems like the perfect place for a holiday. Then everything starts to go wrong. Colin is aware of an awful smell coming off the land, a smell of death and decay…Colin and Prill were looking forward to a holiday of fun and adventure in Ireland. It would have been perfect if only they hadn’t had to drag along their “odd” cousin Oliver. But Oliver, it turns out, isn’t their biggest problem.Almost from the moment they arrive, Colin feels sick from an awful smell, so powerful and horrible that it seems to be rising from the land of the dead. At the same time, Prill is visited by a strange creature creeping into her dreams. Who is she, and what does she want?Only Oliver seems untouched by the danger. As the hot summer days continue, their terror mounts and their baby sister becomes critically ill. Oliver links the present horror with the terrible famine in Ireland of the 1840s – and the strange occupant of the nearby caravan, whose land was lost then through eviction – and he must bring about the reconciliation to save himself and his cousins.

Witch trials in seventeeth-century Connecticut – a Newbery-Medal winning classic.Kit Tyler is marked by suspicion and disapproval from the moment she arrives on the unfamiliar shores of colonial Connecticut in 1687. Alone and desperate, she has been forced to leave her beloved home on the island of Barbados and join a family she has never met. Kit's unconventional background and high-spirited ways immediately clash with the Puritanical lifestyle of her uncle's household, and despite her best efforts to adjust, it seems Kit will never win the favour of those around her.Torn between her quest for belonging and her desire to be true to herself, Kit struggles to survive in a hostile place, and just when it seems she must give up, she finds a kindred spirit. But Kit's friendship with old Hannah Tupper, who is believed by the colonists to be a witch, proves more taboo than she could have imagined, and ultimately Kit is forced to choose between her heart and her duty.Elizabeth George Speare's Newbery Medal-winning novel portrays the life of a girl uprooted from her birthplace and yet unbound by the suppression of her new home, a heroine whom readers will admire for her unwavering sense of truth as well as her infinite capacity to love.

The Indian in the Cupboard is the first of five gripping books about Omri and his plastic North American Indian – Little Bull – who comes alive when Omri puts him in a cupboard.For Omri, it is a dream come true when the plastic American Indian he locks into the old cupboard comes to life. Little Bull is everything an Indian brave should be – proud, fearless and defiant.But being in charge of a real, live, human being is a heavy responsibility, as Omri soon discovers. And when his best friend, Patrick, is let in on the secret, he soon realises that life-changing decisions lie ahead.

A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) The iconic start to the timeless, Newbery-winning series from Cynthia Voigt Dicey began to panic. The four of them had been waiting in the car for hours now. Why wasn’t their mother back? Why had she just walked off like that? What would they do if she never came back?Dicey had known for a while that something was not right with her mother. There wasn’t anything she could put her finger on, but when Mamma said goodbye to them that day in the supermarket car park, Dicey knew that she wasn’t coming back. And so Dicey, as the eldest, plans to lead the three others halfway across America to their aunt – on foot. And the story of how they reached their destination and what they found there is one of the most gripping in children’s literature; it is the story of one child’s courage against impossible odds, and of a determination to find a home that never lets up. Homecoming, the first in a series of seven wonderful novels, is a must for any reader, young or old.

Collins Modern Classics are re-launched in gorgeous new covers bringing these familiar stories to a new generation. From the author of best-loved classic ‘The Snow Goose’.“I was aware, from the very beginning, that I was a most unusual cat…”Thomasina is the beloved pet cat of 7-year-old Mary Ruadh, whose strict father is the town's vet. When Thomasina falls ill, her father sees no other option but to put the cat down. Heartbroken by his cruelty, Mary stops speaking to her father and falls dangerously ill herself.Meanwhile, Thomasina is rescued by Lori, a young woman who lives alone in an isolated glen and is rumoured to be a witch with healing powers.While Lori helps Thomasina recover from her ordeal, Mary's health continues to deteriorate and it is only when Thomasina makes her miraculous return, on a dark and stormy night, and is reunited with her owner that Mary is pulled from the brink of death.

First in the super-funny classic series starring the TOTALLY unforgettable Bagthorpe family – from best-loved author Helen Cresswell.Jack’s fed up of living in the shadow of his brilliant siblings. He and his trusty dog Zero are completely ordinary while the rest of them are annoyingly gifted. So when Uncle Parker comes up with a plan to make Jack stand out, he’s more than a little excited. Can he really get away with claiming to predict the future? And will the hare-brained scheme help Jack shine, or get him noticed for all the wrong reasons?

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. Open your eyes, and see what you can with them before they close forever For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes: the miniature model of her Paris neighbourhood she traces with her fingers; the microscopic layers within the diamond in the Museum of Natural History; the unmapped future which brings her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, whose talents draw the attention of the Hitler Youth.A deeply moving novel about the ways people try to be good to one another, All the Light We Cannot See has touched the hearts of millions of readers across the world, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. ‘Far more than a conventional war story, it’s a tightly focused epic … A bittersweet and moving novel that lingers in the mind’ Daily Mail

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. Henry Skrimshander, newly arrived at college, shy and out of his depth, has a talent for baseball that borders on genius. But sometimes it seems that his only friend is big Mike Schwartz – who champions the talents of others, at the expense of his own. And Owen, Henry’s clever, charismatic, gay roommate, who has a secret that could put his brilliant college career in jeopardy.Pella, the 23-year-old daughter of the college president, has returned home after a failed marriage, determined to get her life in order. Only to find her father, a confirmed bachelor, has fallen desperately in love himself.Then, one fateful day, Henry makes a mistake – misthrows a ball. And everything changes…

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. In 1950s London, novelist Anna Wulf struggles with writer’s block. Divorced with a young child, and fearful of going mad, Anna records her experiences in four coloured notebooks: black for her writing life, red for political views, yellow for emotions, blue for everyday events. But it is a fifth notebook – the golden notebook – that finally pulls these wayward strands of her life together.Widely regarded as Doris Lessing’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, ‘The Golden Notebook’ is wry and perceptive, bold and indispensable.

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for FictionLonglisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for New FictionEnter a whole new world, in this thrilling debut novel set entirely within a beehive.Born into the lowest class of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen.But Flora is not like other bees. Despite her ugliness she has talents that are not typical of her kin. While mutant bees are usually instantly destroyed, Flora is removed from sanitation duty and is allowed to feed the newborns, before becoming a forager, collecting pollen on the wing. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers secrets both sublime and ominous.But enemies are everywhere, from the fearsome fertility police to the high priestesses who jealously guard the Hive Mind. And when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all her instinct to serve is overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce love that will lead to the unthinkable …Laline Paull’s chilling yet ultimately triumphant novel creates a luminous world both alien and uncannily familiar. Thrilling and imaginative, The Bees is the story of a heroine who, in the face of an increasingly desperate struggle for survival, changes her destiny and her world.

The masterful, Pulitzer Prize-winning literary epic about the painful and complex realities of slave life on a Southern plantation. An utterly original exploration of race, trust and the cruel truths of human nature, this is a landmark in modern American literature.Henry Townsend, previously enslaved and now a farmer and bootmaker, is one of the few Black masters in the South. Mentored by William Robbins, one of the most powerful men in Manchester County, Virginia, Townsend has built his plantation with ambition and discipline, while grappling with his place in a society defined by racial oppression.When Townsend dies unexpectedly, the established order falls into disarray. As disruption reverberates throughout the community, a series of events uncovers an intricate web of relationships, power imbalances and betrayals.An astonishing literary epic exploring race, trust and the cruel truths of human nature, Edward P. Jones ’ Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Known World is a landmark in modern American literature

The debut novel from the award-winning screenwriter of 'Bhaji on the Beach'. The story of nine-year-old Meena, growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington.Blonde, sassy and rebellious, Anita Rutter is everything nine-year-old Meena wants to be. Growing up in the only Punjabi family in the village, Meena is desperate to break free from her parents. She wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not her family’s endless Diwali celebrations. And more than anything, she wants Anita to accept her into her gang.But is a friendship with Anita Rutter really everything it seems?A vivid portrait of a British childhood in the 1970s, Anita and Me is a novel rich with humour and compassion – a poignant story of immigration, adolescence and belonging.

The worst storm in history seen from the wheelhouse of a doomed fishing trawler; a mesmerisingly vivid account of a natural hell from a perspective that offers no escape.The ‘perfect storm’ is a once-in-a-hundred-years combination: a high pressure system from the Great Lakes, running into storm winds over an Atlantic island – Sable Island – and colliding with a weather system from the Caribbean: Hurricane Grace. This is the story of that storm, told through the accounts of individual fishing boats caught up in the maelstrom, their families waiting anxiously for news of their return, the rescue services scrambled to save them. It is the story of the old battle between the fisherman and the sea, between man and Nature, but here Nature is an awesome and capricious power that transforms the surface of the Atlantic into an impossible tumult of water walls and gaping voids, with the capacity to break an oil tanker in two, let alone the 72ft swordfishing boat Andrea Gail with her crew of eight. A typical Hurricane encompasses a million cubic miles of atmosphere and can contain enough energy to, in theory, meet the electric power needs of the UK for a decade. Except that a hurricane will not be controlled.In spare, lyrical prose ‘The Perfect Storm’ describes what happened when the Andrea Gail looked into the wrathful face of the perfect storm.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News, a collection of short stories inspired by the harsh and unforgiving landscape of Wyoming. If he does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong. Inspired by the brutal and magnificent landscape of Wyoming, this is one of the most celebrated short story collections of our time. In ‘Brokeback Mountain’, an affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world's violent intolerance, while other stories chart desperation, hard times and unlikely elation. Annie Proulx invests each with an intelligence and black humour that transforms them into something new and surprising in their exploration of the unbreakable bond between a people and their land.From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain confirms Annie Proulx’s status as one of the most powerful and accomplished voices in contemporary American fiction.

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come.When No Logo was first published, it became an instant bestseller and international phenomenon. Its riveting exposé of the branded and corporate world in which we live became a rallying cry for rebellion and self-determination.Engaging, humanising and inspiring, No Logo is a book that defined both a generation and its language of protest. Its analysis is as timely and powerful as ever.

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. What if intelligent life on earth not only evolved on land, but also in the sea? Other Minds is a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself – a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development over millennia, Other Minds explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods. What kind of intelligence do they possess? And how did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart?Heralded as the ‘scuba-diving philosopher’ when Other Minds first published, Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the underwater world and the concept of sentience to trace the question of inner life back to its roots. By comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Other Minds casts crucial new light on the octopus mind – and on our own.

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come.In the spring of 1666, a bolt of infected cloth carries the plague from London to the quiet village of Eyam. The villagers elect to isolate themselves in a fateful quarantine, seen through the eyes of eighteen-year-old Anna Frith. As death and superstition creep from household to household, she must confront loss and the lure of illicit love in an extraordinary Year of Wonders.This timeless and powerful novel, based on a true story, was the astonishing debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March.