Faber and Faber Ltd – serie

FEATHERSTONE: an attractive, small rural town serving outlying estates; bank, post office, school . . . At first glance, Kirsty Gunn's small country town is like any other - a closely connected community bound by habit and familiarity. Yet as we're invited to spend the weekend in Featherstone we come to realise there's something about the place that unsettles us, something intense and intimate that goes deep into the lives of the people who live here and bares their hearts.'The title of Kirsty Gunn's beautiful new novel is a key - the marvellous weighting of words, how each word falls and floats on the page . . . a richly layered and rewarding novel.' Scotland on Sunday

Meet Larry Wyler, a man with a big heart, broad shoulders and some very odd baggage. After the runaway success of his début novel, 'Spacious Skies', Larry decides to leave small-town life and his wife Iris, and move to Manhattan. But with his marriage in pieces and his second novel a flop, he suddenly finds himself struck down with a bad case of writer's block . . .Cue his new incarnation as the newspaper columnist 'Mr Blue', agony uncle to the lonely and frustrated. It may not be great literature, but perhaps the simple act of writing once again will help get Larry back on track.

'An extraordinary book, illuminating not only the political map of Belfast but also the dark ring-roads of collective memory and the secret blueprints inside our heads.' Daily TelegraphVictor Kelly is the resurrection man, a violent and ruthless Protestant killer roaming the streets of Belfast in the 1970s. In this, his brilliant and shocking debut novel, Eoin McNamee announced his arrival as one of the leading chroniclers of Ireland's fractured past.'Achingly exquisite prose as concentrated as poetry, as unfailing an ear for the cadences and quirks of Belfast dialogue as Roddy Doyle has for Dublin and a fatalistic sense of suspense.' Sunday Times'McNamee's stunningly dreamlike prose conjures up images of marvellous precision and intensity . . . An awesomely impressive debut.' Time Out'Impressively confident . . . as lean and grimly purposeful a book as the demon-driven terrorist it sets out to explore.' Jonathan Coe'One of the most outstanding pieces of Irish fiction to come along in years.' Irish Times

'Joseph Mcbride's book has the sweep, passion, complexity and tragic grandeur of a great John Ford film - it should be compulsory reading.' Martin ScorseseJohn Ford's many classic movies - among them Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - earned him worldwide praise and renown. Now Joseph McBride presents us with the definitive account of the man's myriad complexities and contradictions, tracing Ford's life from his modest beginnings as 'Bull' Feeney, the nearsighted football-playing son of Irish immigrants in Maine, to his recognition, after a long, controversial, and much-decorated career, as America's national myth-maker. This deeply insightful and impeccably documented narrative is the epic tribute that Ford's stature merits.

Stuck in a small town, worried over by his single mother - the chain-smoking, bible-quoting Lily - and the 'neighbourly' Mrs Nagle, John Devine yearns for escape. When Jamey Corboy, a self-styled Rimbaudian boy wonder, arrives in town John's life suddenly seems to be full of possibility. But together their nose for trouble may be their undoing and, as John hides from the reality of his mother's ever-worsening health, he is soon faced with a terrible moral dilemma. Brilliantly evoking all the frustrations and pent-up energy of a small-town adolescence, it also gradually becomes the story of Lily herself, and the secrets of her past. Suffused with eerie imagery, black humour and hypnotic prose, John the Revelator is a novel to fall in love with.

In the foothills of a mountain range in northern Pakistan is a beautiful orchard. Swallows wheel and dive silently over the branches, and the scent of jasmine threads through the air. Pomegranates hang heavy, their skins darkening to a deep crimson. Neglected now, the trees are beginning to grow wild, their fruit left to spoil on the branches.Many miles away, a frail young man is flung out of prison gates. Looking up, scanning the horizon for swallows in flight, he stumbles and collapses in the roadside dust. His ravaged body tells the story of fifteen years of brutality.Just one image has held and sustained him through the dark times - the thought of the young girl who had left him dumbstruck with wonder all those years ago, whose eyes were lit up with life.A tale of tenderness in the face of great and corrupt power, In The Orchard, The Swallows is a heartbreaking novel written in prose of exquisite stillness and beauty.

This second collection of Brian Friel's work contains:The Freedom of the City (1973) Volunteers (1975) Living Quarters (1977) Aristocrats (1979) (March) Faith Healer (1979) (April) Translations (1980)

A novel is a relationship, a place outside of time where both reader and writer are challenged and validated, stretched and rewarded. Richard Skinner believes it is your duty as a novelist to bring your whole self to the page; to find your story, not force it; to meet your reader in a spirit of openness. In Writing a Novel he offers up frameworks, strategies and stimuli to help you meet that duty, drawingon his deep experience as one of the UK's leading creative writing teachers. He covers the essentials - narrators, character, setting - with charm and rigour. But Writing a Novel is not a set of instructions: it is a way of thinking, a conversation, a relationship in itself.

It seemed the case of the notorious Yorkshire Ripper was finally closed when Peter Sutcliffe was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1981. But in the early 1980s, Gordon Burn spent three years living in Sutcliffe's home town of Bingley, researching his life. Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son offers one of the most penetrating and provocative insights into the mind of a murderer ever written.Includes a new introduction by Denise Mina.

I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me.Agnes Grey is forced to become a governess due to her family's circumstances, but struggles with the reality of disobedient children, disdainful employers and an isolated existence. Written from Anne's experience, this is a truly personal and moving coming-of-age story.With a stunning cover from Instagram sensation Bodil Jane.

Classic Richard Scarry: Discover the seasons with Nicholas the bunny.I am a bunny. My name is Nicholas. I live in a hollow tree.In the spring, Nicholas picks flowers and chases butterflies, and in the summer, watches the frogs in the pond. In the autumn, he sees the animals preparing for the winter. When winter comes, Nicholas watches the snow falling from the sky, then curls up in his hollow tree and dreams about spring. In print for well over 50 years, this stunningly illustrated, gentle story has been a favourite for generations.A beautifully produced Faber-Scarry publication.