W&N Essentials – serie

THE NOVEL BEHIND THE MAJOR GOLDEN GLOBE-WINNING NETFLIX SERIES STARRING ANYA TAYLOR-JOY'Superb' Time Out'Mesmerizing' Newsweek'Gripping' Financial Times'Sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years - for the pure pleasure and skill of it' Michael Ondaatje When she is sent to an orphanage at the age of eight, Beth Harmon soon discovers two ways to escape her surroundings: playing chess with the janitor and taking the little green pills given to the children to keep them subdued. Before long, it becomes apparent that hers is an unusual talent, and as she progresses to the top of the US chess rankings she is able to forge a new life for herself. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting . . . 'Don't pick this up if you want a night's sleep'  Scotsman 'Few novelists have written about genius - and addiction - as acutely as Walter Tevis'  Telegraph Readers are raving:'This book is so gripping ... it's absolutely riveting' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'A story that just sucks you in' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'I have read this book so many times ... my favourite book of all time' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Tevis has a great ability to create fragile, flawed but intensely relatable characters' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Absolutely thrilling read, beautifully written ... Every moment I wasn't reading it I wanted to be reading it again' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'What a unique story and heroine. A fantastic read' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'This book is just about my favourite book of all time ... I'm not entirely convinced I could like somebody who didn't like this book ... it's funny and moving and gives you an insight into this extraordinary moment as the war is about to begin ... it's so vivid, and what's more, it's incredibly current' Robert Rinder, BBC Radio 4'Wonderfully funny and very poignant' Philip Toynbee'More than an extremely amusing autobiography ... she has evoked a whole generation. Her book is full of the music of time' SUNDAY TIMES'Whenever I read the words "Peer's Daughter" in a headline,' Lady Redesdale once sadly remarked, 'I know it's going to be something about one of you children.' The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. Hons and Rebels is an enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, light-hearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.

'Seductive as hell. Brilliant, unusual, breathtaking' LAUREN GROFF'Languid, beautiful' ANOTHER MAGAZINE'Its pages radiate sex and heat, chlorine and rock'n'roll' MADELAINE LUCASIn 1970s Melbourne, Nora is a happy woman. She is happy moving between the city's communal households, with her little daughter. Happy with days spent at the public pool, and nights spent dancing and drinking and talking and smoking and loving freely. But then Nora meets Javo. Javo, with his crooked, wrecked, wild face and his violently blue eyes. And soon she is trapped in the monkey grip of his drug addiction and her own obsessive love for him. On its first publication in 1977, Monkey Grip was both a sensation and a lightning rod due to its frank portrayal of the lives of Garner's generation. Now a modern classic, it introduces us to Helen Garner's dazzling and radical literary voice. A W&N Essential with an introduction by Lauren Groff

'I once decided to become friends with someone on the sole basis that she named O Caledonia as her favourite book' Maggie O'Farrell 'A sparky, funny work of genius' Ali Smith'The reader feels unalloyed joy on every page' IndependentAt the bottom of a great stone staircase, dressed in her mother's black lace evening dress, twisted in murderous death, lies Janet. So end the sixteen years of Janet's short life.A life spent in a draughty Scottish castle, where roses will not grow, and a jackdaw decides to live in the doll's house.A life peopled by prettier, smoother-haired siblings, a Nanny with a face like the North Sea and the peculiar, whisky-swigging Cousin Lila.A life where Janet is perpetually misunderstood - and must turn from people, to animals, to books, to her own wild and wonderful imagination. A W&N Essential with an introduction by Maggie O'Farrell'Funny, surprising, exquisitely written and brilliant on the smelly, absurd, harsh business of growing up' David Nicholls'A wonderful oddity - brief, vivid, eccentric, written with ferocious zest and black humour' Penelope LivelyReaders love this classic:'Macabre, funny and sad. Beautifully written' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Dizzying heights and depths of despair' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Poetically written ... I will read it over and over' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Poetic, magical, disturbing ... and comforting' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'I am so happy that I chanced across this book, whilst simultaneously being devastated that I have only just discovered it' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Dua Lipa's Book Club Pick for August 2025One of the Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century 'A true-crime classic and literary masterpiece' ANNE ENRIGHT'Bears comparison with In Cold Blood' KATE ATKINSON'It grabbed me by the throat' GILLIAN ANDERSON'Sharp and forensic' DUA LIPAFather's Day, 2005. Just after nightfall, a discarded husband was driving his three young sons back to their mother's house. On that dark country road, barely five minutes from home, the old white car swerved off the highway and plunged into a dam. The father freed himself and swam to the bank, but the car sank to the bottom, and all the children drowned. The court case that followed became Helen Garner's obsession, one that would take over her life until its final verdict. The resulting book, This House of Grief, is a true crime classic and literary masterpiece, which examines just what we are capable of and how fiercely we hide it from ourselves.A W&N Essential with an introduction by Rachel Cooke

'Warm, wise, witty, and just plain fun' Maggie ShipsteadAt a perfectly ordinary cocktail party, Francis is introduced to Billy and - although it slips right by him at the time - he falls in love with her at once.Billy is a serious, often glum person. An economic historian, she is indifferent to a great many things (clothes, food, home décor), frowns easily and is frequently irritated. Francis is older. He likes routine and a well-run household; he likes to pay for dinner, open car doors and call Billy at night to make sure she is safe. Both are happily married - but not to each other. So begins a whirlwind love affair, perfectly captured in this frank, funny irresistible novel, from its fabulous inception to its inevitable end.A W&N Essential with an introduction by Caroline O'Donoghue

'If you've ever been in a relationship with another person, if you've ever had a family, you need to read this book' Ann PatchettPolly Solo-Miller Demarest is the perfect flower of the Solo-Miller family.The Solo-Millers have everything: looks, brains, money, a strong, fortified sense of clan, and branches in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, as well as London, just like a banking house.And Polly, along with Henry Demarest, a big handsome lawyer, has a beautiful household of her own and two nice, sturdy children.But one day - completely unexpectedly - she finds herself entangled in a sweet yet painful love affair with a painter, who loves her in the specific and allows her to cry freely in front of him. Suddenly all the values she has lived by are called into question.From Laurie Colwin, the ultimate chronicler of the human heart, comes a novel about a woman tired of being taken for granted - and a reminder that family, like happiness, can take many forms.A W&N Essential with an introduction by Lisa Owens

WINNER OF THE 1970 BOOKER PRIZE'And so at the Majestic everything returned to the way it had been before. The gleaming tiles became dulled. Sofas as sleek as prize cattle lost their glow.' 1919, the Majestic Hotel in Kinalough, Ireland. Haunted war veteran Major Brendan Archer arrives to marry Angela Spencer, daughter of the house. But his fiancée is strangely altered, and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline.The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating; its few remaining guests thrive on rumours and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. And outside the order of the British Empire totters, as the violence of 'the troubles' mounts.'A work of genius' Guardian

'A jewel of a novel about a perfect family falling apart' DAVID NICHOLLS'A slim, deeply humane work that tingles with life' THE TIMES'One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century' MERVE EMREAthena and Dexter Fox are content. They love each other. They are friends.They live with their two young sons in a sparsely furnished house near the Merri Creek: its walls cracking, its floors sloping and its doors hanging loosely in their frames. There is a piano in their kitchen.But then, Dexter runs into Elizabeth, an old friend from his university days. She brings into his world her loose-living musician boyfriend, Philip, and her seventeen-year-old sister, Vicki.And all at once, the bonds that hold the Fox family together begin to fray. Since its first publication in 1984, The Children's Bach has been hailed as one of only four perfect short novels in the English language, one of the greatest family novels ever written and Garner's masterpiece. A W&N Essential with an introduction by David Nicholls

'I can't think of a living stylist I admire more than Renata Adler' ELIF BATUMAN'Luminously exact' NEW YORK TIMES'It was as though the novel had outstretched arms and I fell in' PARIS REVIEWWhen Speedboat burst on the scene in the late '70s it was like nothing readers had encountered before.It seemed to disregard the rules of the novel, but it wore its unconventionality with ease. Reading it was a pleasure of a new, unexpected kind. Above all, there was its voice: ambivalent, curious, wry, the voice of Jen Fain, a journalist negotiating the fraught landscape of contemporary urban America. Party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, professors, journalists, presidents and debutantes fill these dispatches from the world as Jen finds it. A touchstone over the years for writers as different as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Hardwick, Speedboat returns to enthral a new generation of readers.A W&N Essential with an introduction by Hilton Als

'Brilliant. Searching and profound' E.H. Carr, Times Literary Supplement'When reading Isaiah Berlin we breathe an altogether different air' New York Review of Books'Beautifully written' W. H. Auden, New Yorker'Ingenious. Exactly what good critical writing should be' Max Beloff, GuardianThe fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.For Isaiah Berlin, there is a fundamental distinction in mankind: those who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things - foxes - and those who relate everything to a central all-embracing system - hedgehogs. It can be applied to the greatest creative minds: Dante, Ibsen and Proust are hedgehogs, while Shakespeare, Aristotle and Joyce are foxes.Yet when Berlin reaches the case of Tolstoy, he finds a fox by nature, but a hedgehog by conviction; a duality which holds the key to understanding Tolstoy's work, illuminating a paradox of his philosophy of history and showing why he was frequently misunderstood by his contemporaries and critics.With a foreword by Michael IgnatieffA W&N Essential

'Breathtaking, moving and very funny' Brandon TaylorOlly is twenty-one when she first meets Sam Bax. Fearless, goofy and risk-taking, he arrives in her life on the back of a huge motorcycle. By the end of the day, the pair are kissing in an apple orchard. A year later, they are married. Five years after that, Sam has sailed into a storm and Olly is a widow at twenty-seven, left to grieve her impetuous, irresistible husband and deal with a world that treats her like a piece of antique glass. But as time passes, she realises that her risks are as daring as any of Sam's: while he chanced life and limb, Olly risks her heart - and finds that love can take some surprising turns. With humour, compassion and a decided lack of sentimentality, this is the wise and witty story of a woman trying to find her future, from the beloved Laurie Colwin.A W&N Essential with an introduction from Brandon Taylor

'My life suddenly made sense when I encountered Alice Walker's fiction' Tayari Jones'Remarkable' New York TimesMeridian Hill, the brilliant and inquisitive daughter of a working-class Black family in the American south, comes of age against the turbulent backdrop of the 1960s civil rights movement. Life starts out hard - at seventeen, she finds herself married with a child and denied an education because of it. But Meridian is passionate and resolute, determined to improve the lives of those around her, even in the face of oppression and uncertainty, heartbreak and failing health. And amid the chaos of social upheaval, Meridian discovers who she is - a woman capable of great courage, resilience and hope.Charting the story of the civil rights movement through one woman's struggle, Meridian is a powerful meditation on community, womanhood and self-discovery from the Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Color Purple.

'Inspiring. Emotionally charged. Ground-breaking' BERNARDINE EVARISTO'A revelation. I am so thankful to Ntozake Shange for seeing us, reflecting us and showing us how beautiful we can be' JESMYN WARD'Encompassing, it seems, every feeling and experience a woman has ever had' NEW YORKERThe Lady in Red has adored her lover for eight months, 2 weeks and a day, but now she is leaving. The Lady in Blue has an abortion, all alone. The Lady in Brown can read fifteen books in three weeks.The Lady in Purple has met a man, and is finally being real. The Lady in Yellow was a virgin, until she spent her graduation night driving around in a black Buick with boys. And the Lady in Orange has to dance to keep from crying and dying.Written in 1975 and immediately hailed as a masterwork, this 'choreo-poem' is made up of monologues detailing loss, betrayal, love and community. A passionate and fearless portrait of black womanhood in the twentieth century, it resonates with deep emotional power and unusual beauty. A W&N Essential

WINNER OF THE 1973 BOOKER PRIZE'We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us... but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?'Krishnapur, 1857: India is on the brink of a violent and bloody mutiny. In this remote town on the vast North Indian plain, life for the British is still orderly and genteel. But when the sepoys at the nearest military cantonment rise in revolt, the British community retreats with shock into the Residency. They prepare to fight for their lives with what weapons they can muster.As food and ammunition grow short when the British find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion - at once brutal, blundering and wistful - is soon revealed.'An idiosyncratic masterpiece, wise and richly comic' Hilary Mantel

'The common denomination of seasonal beauty and wonder ties your experience to that of millions who have loved and always will love the country earth.'Fresh, lyrical and full of enchantment, the nature writing of H. E. Bates is alive with the joys of his beloved English countryside, from his hometown in Northamptonshire to the orchards of Kent. Bringing together a rich variety of his previously uncollected essays, Why I Live in the Country is an invitation to slow down, breathe in and look to the land for the wonders we might find there.From the first inklings of spring to the deep silence of midwinter, these essays move through the seasons of English rural life in a collection that celebrates the beauty in every hedgerow, field and tree.

'This book is heaven. Elspeth Barker writes like no one else'OLIVIA LAING'Deserves to be permanently on the bedside table - to cheer, reassure and inspire'OBSERVER'Gothic, poetic and exuberantly funny. What a pleasure it was to read'ESTHER FREUD'Joyous, startling, funny, lush, dark and complex'THE TIMESIn Notes from the Henhouse, you will find:A Gothic castle, a draughty Norfolk farmhouse and a malevolent AgaA pet pig, Portia with a penchant for drama, an obsession with geraniums and an addiction to wine (the Bulgarian vintage)George Barker, poet and beloved husband, warbling cowboy songs into his glass and declaiming Hopkins and Houseman in The Drinking RoomFive entrancing baby cherubimos, rolling and bouncing about in a big brass bed, before growing up at breakneck speedThe ecstasy of writing, the dither of procrastination, and the endless adventures to be had in the wild realms of the imaginationThe outrage of death, the loneliness of widowhood, and then the surprising joys of dereliction: of moving very slowly round the garden in a shapeless coat, planting drifts of narcissus bulbs for latter springs.This collection of autobiographical essays from the inimitable Elspeth Barker, author of the beloved modern classic O Caledonia, is a delightful portrait of a riotous, rapturous, remarkable life.

'Both book and life are unforgettable' New York Times'Read it twice and then read it again' Ann PatchettAt age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. It took her twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty years of reconstructive procedures before she could come to terms with her appearance. In this lyrical and strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. She captures what it is like as a child and a young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.

'A love story for anyone who tends to overthink things' Maile MeloyIn her late thirties, book designer Jane Louise Parker has started to worry she will never find someone to marry. Until she meets Teddy, whose native decency leaves her almost breathless at her good fortune. After their wedding, Jane Louise returns to work at a small publishing house, but struggles to think of herself as older, wiser, more grown-up. Soon though she, along with her best friend Edie, will find out whether motherhood might just be the ultimate dividing line between youth and something else. Laurie Colwin's final novel joyfully explores friendship, love, marriage, motherhood and families created in their own particular way.A W&N Essential

'Colwin is a bard of burgeoning adulthood' New YorkerPolly has been the house pet to several families: friendly, cheerful, good with children, happy to bask in the domesticity of other people's lives - until she meets Gilbert. Cordy, raised with the spartan, pleasure-rejecting habits of the very rich, cannot stomach the pleasures of his beloved Jane's cooking, her lavender soap, her adoration. And Ann, the perpetually stoned young wife of a popular college professor, tries to find the courage to tell her husband that she's been high since the day they met. Humorous, tender and moving, here are tales of love and desire in all its forms, with each story told in Laurie Colwin's irresistible, inimitable style.A W&N Essential

'Colwin wrings magic from ordinary lives' Entertainment WeeklyCarl thinks that his wife Lucy tells him everything, until he discovers her secret daily habit. She has arranged a part of her life away from him and gone swimming in it. Patricia plays the same honky-tonk album over and over, while worrying that she'll never become any less young and heedless, any more willing to get down to what her husband calls "the things of life". Elizabeth has an orderly existence up to the day she meets Richard: a slightly wrecked married man on the fringes of middle age who holds her hand as if it is an eggshell. This sparkling story collection from the adored Laurie Colwin explores love, longing and all we can never know about each other.A W&N Essential

'Seriously wise, seriously wonderful, seriously comic - your life will be richer for it' Katherine HeinyGuido and Vicent - third cousins and best friends - spend their time lolling around and wondering who they will marry.Then, one wet Sunday afternoon in a museum, Gudio meets Holly. Precise about everything, Holly knows what she likes: pressed sheets, tea on a tray - and now, Guido.Soon after, Vincent falls for his misanthropic new colleague, Misty. She seems completely uninterested in love, until she agrees to go to dinner with Vincent.This exquisitely well-written and much-beloved novel follows the two couples through courtship, arguments, wedding plans and other perils, as they find a way to be happy (almost) all the time.A W&N Essential with an introduction from Katherine Heiny

'A new-found classic to rival Waugh and Isherwood' Lucy Hughes-Hallett'Infused with the energy and the zest for life of youth' Philippe Sands'A marvellous novella. Melancholy, hilarious, dramatic and fateful' Catherine Taylor Paris, 1932. Two lovers, Raimund and Teddy, have just one day and one night to spend together before Raimund must return to Berlin. A young German barrister, Raimund has followed the irresistible Teddy to Paris. Teddy moves effortlessly through the city's dazzling, bohemian social scene, where nights dissolve into dancing, cigarettes, aperitifs and plates of pommes frites, and mornings arrive long after noon. Together, the pair roam through the city's cafés, restaurants and boulevards, from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower. They bicker and flirt, scold and kiss, celebrating their freedom but knowing nothing can remain as it is, as the hour of Raimund's evening train comes ever closer. Parting is an exquisite autobiographical novel capturing the last fragile moments of love and freedom before exile, fascism and war. Discovered after Sebastian Haffner's death, it became an instant German bestseller and has been hailed as a forgotten literary masterwork.A W&N Essential translated and with an introduction by Michael Hofmann

NOW A MAJOR ITV DRAMA, THE SINGAPORE GRIP IS A MODERN CLASSIC FROM THE BOOKER-PRIZE WINNING J.G. FARRELL'Brilliant, richly absurd, melancholy' Observer'Enjoyable on many different levels' Sunday Times'One of the most outstanding novelists of his generation' SpectatorSingapore, 1939: Walter Blackett, ruthless rubber merchant, is head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. And his family's prosperous world of tennis parties, cocktails and deferential servants seems unchanging. No one suspects it - but this world is poised on the edge of the abyss. This is the eve of the Fall of Singapore.A love story and a war story, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip is a modern classic.'A narrative of exceptional imagination and scope' Newsweek'A fine piece of work, informative, funny tragic. One of those novels that present a whole world for the reader to inhabit' Margaret Drabble'No writer has swallowed all of Singapore with the verve and wit of the late J.G. Farrell' Time'His brilliant of style places him beside such masters of the modern novel as Patrick White and Saul Bellow' Olivia Manning

Living alone in New York, Frannie teaches creative writing to a motley bunch of students, and secretly compiles a dictionary of street slang: virginia, n., vagina; snapper, n., vagina; brasole, n., vagina. One evening at a bar, she stumbles upon a man, his face in shadow, a tattoon on his wrist, a woman kneeling between his legs. A week later a detective shows up at her door. The woman's body has been discovered in the park across the street. Soon Frannie is propelled into a sexual liaison that tests the limits of her safety and desires, as she begins a terrifying descent into the dark places that reside deep within her.

NOW A MAJOR ITV DRAMA, THE SINGAPORE GRIP IS A MODERN CLASSIC FROM THE BOOKER-PRIZE WINNING J.G. FARRELL'Brilliant, richly absurd, melancholy' Observer'Enjoyable on many different levels' Sunday Times'One of the most outstanding novelists of his generation' SpectatorSingapore, 1939: Walter Blackett, ruthless rubber merchant, is head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. And his family's prosperous world of tennis parties, cocktails and deferential servants seems unchanging. No one suspects it - but this world is poised on the edge of the abyss. This is the eve of the Fall of Singapore.A love story and a war story, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip is a modern classic.'A narrative of exceptional imagination and scope' Newsweek'A fine piece of work, informative, funny tragic. One of those novels that present a whole world for the reader to inhabit' Margaret Drabble'No writer has swallowed all of Singapore with the verve and wit of the late J.G. Farrell' Time'His brilliant of style places him beside such masters of the modern novel as Patrick White and Saul Bellow' Olivia Manning

'From the wide veranda you stepped out on to an acre of lawn, as smooth as glass; from the lawn you stepped on to nothing but fresh air.'A summer of the 1870s, the Himalayan resort of Simla, in colonial India. To the cool of the hills comes a reluctant Dr McNab, with his wife and young niece. For Emily, romance is in the air. For the mysterious Mrs Forester, there is scandal brewing. And for the Bishop of Simla, rain clouds are not the only storms on the horizon.The Hill Station is the novel on which J. G. Farrell was working at the time of his tragically early death. It demonstrates powerfully what a great loss to literature this was.'Remarkable, captivating from page one' Evening Standard

'Perfect and prescient. A tremendously influential book' CHRIS KRAUS 'Plangent, mournful, brilliant' ARTFORUM'A bright kaleidoscope of a book' ANNE TYLERPitch Dark is a book about love.Kate Ennis is poised at a critical moment in an affair with a married man. The complications and contradictions pursue her from a house in rural Connecticut to a brownstone apartment in New York City, to a small island off the coast of Washington, to a pitch black night in backcountry Ireland.Composed in the style of Renata Adler's celebrated novel Speedboat and displaying her keen journalist's eye and mastery of language, both simple and sublime, Pitch Dark is a bold and astonishing work of art.A W&N Essential with an introduction by Muriel Spark

'A masterpiece' Anita Brookner'A very beautiful novel' Nick Hornby'Includes some of the most perfect sentences in English' GuardianAt the turn of the twentieth century, two children play on an English beach. Eustace, a gentle, dreamy, boy with a weak heart, relies on his older sister Hilda.As young adults, Eustace and Hilda are unexpectedly invited to stay at the grand country house of the wealthy Staveley family. The weekend's events will haunt the siblings' lives as their story travels from Oxford colleges to Venetian palazzi.The magnum opus from the author of The Go-Between, this is an enchanting, tender exploration of two siblings who cannot live together or apart.With an introduction by Anita Brookner