VMC – serie

DISCOVER THE DU MAURIER DARK ROMANCE COLLECTION'A brilliantly executed thriller' VOGUE'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'The master of slow-burning menace' STACEY HALLS'Her influence on fiction is incalculable, her imagination unsurpassable' ANDREW MICHAEL HURLEYShe was a woman, and for no reason in heaven or earth she loved him. He had kissed her, and she was bound to him for ever.On a bitter November evening, Mary Yellan crosses the windswept Cornish moors to seek revenge with her Aunt Patience at Jamaica Inn. But the crumbling inn is no safe haven, and Patience is a changed woman, cowering before her domineering husband Joss. In fear of her life, and disturbed by her powerful attraction to Joss's younger brother, Mary is soon plunged into a brutal world of smuggling and murder in which she can trust no one - not even herself. 'The author's stunning evocation of her beloved Cornwall is the real star of this book' RUTH WARE

The bestselling book that inspired the cult classic film, Girl, Interrupted, starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie."Not since Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim" TIME "Intelligent and painful" Guardian"Poignant, astonishing memoir" New York TimesIn 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital to be treated for depression. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital renowned for its famous clientele - Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor and Ray Charles.A clear-sighted, unflinching work that provokes questions about our definitions of sane and insane, Kaysen's extraordinary memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers.

From the oyster huts of Whitstable to the music halls of Victorian London, Tipping the Velvet is the glorious first novel from this much-loved author'Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.'A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'.'Erotic and absorbing... Written with startling power' New York Times Book Review'An unstoppable read, a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demi-monde of the roaries Nineties' Independent on Sunday'Waters is an extremely confident writer, combining precise, sensuous descriptions with irony and wit' Observer

John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughter's death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that instead of laying their ghosts to rest they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events. The four other haunting, evocative stories in this volume also explore deep fears and longings, secrets and desires: a lonely teacher who investigates a mysterious American couple, a young woman confronting her father's past, a party of pilgrims who meet disaster in Jerusalem and a scientist who harnesses the power of the mind to chilling effect.

'How long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew ...' A classic of alienation and horror, 'The Birds' was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world. The mountain paradise of 'Monte Verita' promises immortality, but at a terrible price; a neglected wife haunts her husband in the form of an apple tree; a professional photographer steps out from behind the camera and into his subject's life; a date with a cinema usherette leads to a walk in the cemetery; and a jealous father finds a remedy when three's a crowd ...

A tale of love and adventure from the internationally bestselling author of Rebecca. 'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN 'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A pure, exhilarating adventure story - a swashbuckling tale of exquisite danger and tangled love' JULIE MYERSON The Restoration Court knows Lady Dona St Columb to be ripe for any folly, any outrage that will alter the tedium of her days. But there is another, secret Dona who longs for a life of honest love - and sweetness, even if it is spiced with danger. It is this Dona who flees the stews of London for remote Navron, looking for peace of mind amid its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds there the passion her spirit craves - in the love of a daring pirate hunted by all Cornwall, a Frenchman who, like Dona, would gamble his life for a moment's joy.

Sara Stanley is only fourteen, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist. In the charming town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding tales. And when Bev King and his younger brother Felix arrive for the summer, they, too, are captivated by the Story Girl. Whether she's leading them on exciting misadventure or narrating timeless stories - from the scary 'Tale of the Family Ghost' to the fanciful 'How Kissing Was Discovered' to the bittersweet 'The Blue Chest of Rachel Ward' - the Story Girl has her audience hanging on every word.Show less

Introduced in The Story Girl, Sara Stanley is L.M. Montgomery's most enchanting heroine since Anne of Green Gables. Sara was born with a fertile imagination and a strong sense of fun - and she gets her chance to put her talents to good use when she spends the winter with the King family in the old-fashioned town of Carlisle. On a blustery November day the King children and Sara, the Story Girl, come up with a great idea that will help them endure the dreary winter season. They will publish a magazine of their thoughts and adventures. From 'Personals' and 'Fashion Notes' to an etiquette column and stories of the most interesting happenings in Carlisle, Our Magazine is simply the most entertaining and delightful publication anyone in town has ever read. But seasons pass, and nothing is forever - and soon it will be time for the Story Girl to leave her good friends on Prince Edward Island, friends with whom she has walked the golden road of youth.

For the first time Patricia Highsmith's acclaimed short stories have been collected in one volume

'The boldest of English women writers' LORNA SAGE 'Her writing is pyrotechnic - fuelled with ideas, packed with images and spangling the night with her starry language' OBSERVER 'She can glide from ancient to modern, from darkness to luminosity, from depravity to comedy without any hint of strain and without losing the elusive power of the original tales' THE TIMES 'This crazy world whirled around her, men and women dwarfed by toys and puppets, where even the birds are mechanical and the few human figures went masked . . . She was in the night once again, and the doll was herself.' One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother's wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave her rural home, she is sent to London to live with relatives she has never met: gentle Aunt Margaret, mute since her wedding day; and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn. Brooding over all is Uncle Philip, who loves only the puppets he creates in his workshop, which are life-sized - and uncannily lifelike.

'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIAN 'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER'Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARDThe Dud Avocado gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living. Sally Jay Gorce is a woman with a mission. It's the 1950s, she's young and she's in Paris. Having dyed her hair pink, she wears evening dresses in the daytime and vows to go native in a way not even the natives can manage. Embarking on an educational programme that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realises he's single and wants to marry her); nights in cabarets and jazz clubs in the company of assorted "citizens of the world"; an entanglement with a charming psychopath and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador. But an education like this doesn't come cheap. Will our heroine be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, or can she keep up her whirlwind Parisian existence?Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

A beautiful new edition of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, the iconic, beloved and deeply moving first volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography. ***'The international classic and bestseller, Maya Angelou's memoir paints a portrait of 'a brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' BARACK OBAMA'One of my favourites' TINA KNOWLES'I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am always talking about what it's like to be a human being. This is how we are, what makes us laugh, and this is how we fall and how we somehow, amazingly, stand up again' Maya AngelouIn this first volume of her seven books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a Black woman she has known discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity' JAMES BALDWIN'She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds' OPRAH WINFREY'She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was a real original. There is no duplicate' TONI MORRISON'Heartbreaking, beautiful and inspiring in equal measure . . . a landmark work of literature' TELEGRAPH

We kept our heads above the morass, stifled screaming despairs only by the exercise of Good Behaviour.Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic St Charles family is sinking into a state of decaying grace. Aroon, the unlovely daughter of the house, silently longs for affection - which she receives neither from her icy mother nor her hunting-obsessed father. The fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem stifled by the rules of good behaviour. But no crumbling codes of conduct can save the members of the St Charles family from their own dark secrets and repressed cruelties . . .Introduced by Maggie O'Farrell'Molly Keane is a mistress of wicked comedy' VOGUE 'Dark, complex, engaging . . . a wonderful tour de force' MARIAN KEYES'I have read and re-read Molly Keane more, I think, than any other writer. Nobody else can touch her as a satirist, tragedian and dissector of human behaviour' MAGGIE O'FARRELL'I really wish I had written this book...You read it with mounting horror and hilarity' HILARY MANTEL

'Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece' GUARDIAN, 'The Best 100 Novels''An author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth' SARAH WATERS'Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabath Bowen - soul-sisters all' ANNE TYLEROn a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel.

The re-dipping of dishes was a small matter, but the emotional texture of married life is made up of small matters. This one had become invested with a fatal quality.Imogen, the beautiful and much younger wife of distinguished barrister Evelyn Gresham, is facing the greatest challenge of her married life. Their neighbour Blanche Silcox, competent, middle-aged and tweedy - the very opposite of Imogen - seems to be vying for Evelyn's attention. And to Imogen's increasing disbelief, she may be succeeding. With exquisite elegance and irony, The Tortoise and the Hare reveals that in affairs of the heart, the race is not always won by the swift - or the fair.INTRODUCED BY HILARY MANTEL 'The perfection of its tone and prose is matched by an anguished wit' AMANDA CRAIG, GUARDIAN 'Wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it' JILLY COOPER 'A subtle and beautiful book . . . Very few authors combine her acute psychological insight with her grace and style' HILARY MANTEL

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth.When, at sixteen, Janie is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams - who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds. Rediscovered and championed by Alice Walker in the 1970s, Hurston's lyrical novel of self-discovery is now acclaimed as one of the greatest American classics of the twentieth century.INTRODUCED BY ZADIE SMITH'There is no novel I love more' ZADIE SMITH'This novel is a packet of surprises' GUARDIAN 'One of the greatest writers of our time' TONI MORRISON'Zora Neale Hurston was a knockout' MAYA ANGELOU'There is no book more important to me than this one. It speaks to me as no novel, past or present, has ever done.' ALICE WALKER

A tale of love and adventure from the internationally bestselling author of Rebecca. 'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN 'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A pure, exhilarating adventure story - a swashbuckling tale of exquisite danger and tangled love' JULIE MYERSON Lady Dona St Columb seems to revel in scandal: she is involved in every intrigue of the Restoration Court. But secretly, the shallowness of Court life disgusts her, and in her heart she longs for freedom and honest love. Retreating to Navron, her husband's Cornish estate, she seeks peace and solitude away from London. But Navron is being used as the base for a French pirate, an outlaw hunted all over Cornwall.Instead of feeling fear, Dona's thirst for adventure has never been more aroused; in Jean-Benoit Aubéry she finds a sensitive man who would, like her, gamble his life for a moment's joy. Together they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which will force Dona to make the ultimate choice: will she sacrifice her lover to certain death, or risk her own life to save him?

'Funny, funny, funny. She's wicked and wise' GRETA GERWIG'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER'Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARD'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIAN'This dizzying evocation of youth, sex, irresponsibility and doubt is laugh-out-loud funny' DAILY MAILHere was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I could just grasp it . . . Sally Jay Gorce is a girl hellbent on living. It's the 1950s and she's an American in Paris: witty, headstrong and disaster-prone. She dyes her hair pink, wears evening dresses in the daytime and prowls the Left Bank in search of love, adventure and fame. But an education like this doesn't come cheap. Will our heroine be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, or can she keep up her whirlwind Parisian existence? As effervescent as a champagne cocktail, The Dud Avocado is a deliciously funny cult classic.INTRODUCED BY RACHEL COOKE

With a cover design by Lucienne DayWhen Mrs Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he is a 'pisseur de copie', that he 'urinates frightful prose', little does she realise the repercussions. Holding that 'no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest' Mrs Hawkins refuses to retract her judgement, and as a consequence, loses not one, but two much-sought-after jobs in publishing. Now, years older, successful, and happily a far cry from Kensington, she looks back over the dark days that followed, in which she was embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack remedies, blackmail and suicide.

Named by the Guardian as one of 'the 100 best novels,' and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont is a humorous and compassionate look at friendship between an old woman and a young man from a 'magnificent...writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' (David Baddiel, Independent)On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel.'Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds' -Robert McCrum 'the 100 best novels', Guardian