The bestselling classic and masterpiece of psychological fiction
'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY
'The book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'Excellent entertainment . . . du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings' STEPHEN KING
On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband's home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread. Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realises that she barely knows him. In every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca, and the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow.
Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the other woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.
'Rebecca is a masterpiece' GUARDIAN
'This chilling, suspenseful tale is as fresh and readable as it was when it was first written' DAILY TELEGRAPH
A gentle romance begins innocently enough in the stalls of a London theatre where Catherine is enjoying her ninth and Christopher his thirty-sixth visit to the same play.
He is a magnificent young man with flame-coloured hair. She is the sweetest little thing in a hat. There is just one complication: Christopher is twenty-five, while Catherine is just a little bit older. Flattered by the passionate attentions of youth, Catherine, with marriage and motherhood behind her, is at first circumspect, but finally succumbs to her lover's charms.
The engaging humour of this autobiographical novel blunts the bitter edge of irony in the hypocrisy of 1920s society.
'She wrote exciting plots, she was highly skilled at arousing suspense' GUARDIAN
'This novel catches fire' NEW YORK TIMES
'With unfailing du Maurier skill, the author has coupled family interest with dramatic sense' ELIZABETH BOWEN
She set men's hearts on fire and scandalized a country.
In Regency London, the only way for a woman to succeed is to beat men at their own game. So when Mary Anne Clarke seeks an escape from her squalid surroundings in Bowling Inn Alley, she ventures first into the scurrilous world of the pamphleteers. Her personal charms are such, however, before long she is noticed by the Duke of York.
With her taste for luxury and power, Mary Anne, now a royal mistress, must aim higher. Her lofty connections allow her to establish a thriving trade in military commissions, provoking a scandal that rocks the government and brings personal disgrace.
A vivid portrait of overweening ambition, Mary Anne is set during the Napoleonic Wars and based on the life of du Maurier's own great-great-grandmother.
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments and Alias Grace
The trick was to disappear without a trace, leaving behind me the shadow of a corpse, a shadow everyone would mistake for solid reality. At first I thought I'd managed it.
Fat girl, thin girl. Red hair, brown hair. Polish aristocrat, radical husband. Joan Foster has dozens of different identities, and she's utterly confused by them all. After a life spent running away from difficult situations, she decides to escape to a hill town in Italy to take stock of her life.
But first she must carefully arrange her own death.
'A very funny novel, lightly told with wry detachment and considerable art' Washington Post
'A mistress of controlled hysteria' Time
'If you feel safe only with "nine to five" reality, you'll probably not enjoy Atwood's books. But if you'd like to lift off, try her' Cosmopolitan
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION and THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son: 'I told you last night that I might be gone sometime . . . You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.'
'A visionary work of dazzling originality' ROBERT MCCRUM, OBSERVER
'Writing of this quality, with an authority as unforced as the perfect pitch in music, is rare and carries with it a sense almost of danger' JANE SHILLING, DAILY TELEGRAPH
'A beautiful novel: wise, tender and perfectly measured' SARAH WATERS
'A masterpiece' SUNDAY TIMES
Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church - the only available shelter from the rain - and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.
Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves.
Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social ceremonies. Newland Archer, soon to marry the lovely May Welland, is a man torn between his respect for tradition and family and his attraction to May's strongly independent cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. Plagued by the desire to live in a world where two people can love each other free from condemnation and judgment by the group, Newland views the artful delicacy of the world he lives in as a comforting security one moment, and at another, as an oppressive fiction masking true human nature. The Age of Innocence is at once a richly drawn portrait of the elegant lifestyles, luxurious brownstones, and fascinating culture of bygone New York society and a compelling look at the conflict between human passions and the social tribe that tries to control them.
'No novel about any black woman could ever be the same after this' TONI MORRISON
'Corregidora is the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women' JAMES BALDWIN
Upon publication in 1975, Corregidora was hailed as a masterpiece, winning acclaim from writers including James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and John Updike. Exploring themes such as race, sexuality and the long repercussions of slavery, this powerful novel paved the way for Beloved and The Colour Purple. Now, this lost classic is published for a new generation of readers.
Blues singer Ursa is consumed by her hatred of Corregidora, the nineteenth-century slave master who fathered both her mother and grandmother. Charged with 'making generations' to bear witness to the abuse embodied in the family name, Ursa Corregidora finds herself unable to keep alive this legacy when she is made sterile in a violent fight with her husband. Haunted by the ghosts of a Brazilian plantation, pained by a present of lovelessness and despair, Ursa slowly and firmly strikes her own terms with womanhood.
AS HEARD ON THE BACKLISTED PODCAST
'A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers' TAYARI JONES, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE
Also new to the VMC list: Eva's Man and The Healing by Gayl Jones.
'An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood' JOHN UPDIKE
'Gayl Jones's first novel, Corregidora (1975), was both shocking and ground-breaking in its probing of the psychological legacy of slavery and sexual ownership through the life of a Kentucky blues singer ... it predated Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's Beloved, revealing an unfinished emancipation and the power of historical memory to shape lives. It also marked a shift in African-American literature that made women, and relationships between black people, central' MAYA JAGGI, Guardian
'Corregidora's survey of trauma and overcoming has become even better and more relevant with the passage of time. It remains an indispensable point of entry into the tradition of African American writing that Gayl Jones reshaped and enriched' PAUL GILROY
The international bestseller: a hilarious, heartfelt story of all-consuming and unexpected love
Shortlisted for a TikTok Book Award - Book of the Year (UK and Ireland)
'If you've ever been young, you will love The Rachel Incident like I did' GABRIELLE ZEVIN
'Funny, nostalgic, sexy' MONICA HEISEY
'Hilarious, wise and wonderfully written' GRAHAM NORTON
____________________________________________________________________________
Everyone in Cork remembers the Rachel Incident. But what really happened? It's simple. It's complicated. It's about love, sex and friendship. It's definitely about betrayal. And, above all, it's the story of Rachel and James, two twenty-somethings who met at a bookshop, became best friends, and spent one unforgettable year screwing up and growing up.
____________________________________________________________________________
'I adored it' COCO MELLORS
'Reading it is like hearing your funniest, sexiest friend tell you the best story they know' KATHERINE RUNDELL
'Sharply witty, warm-hearted and wise' GUARDIAN
'O'Donoghue captures all the intensity of messy young love' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'A book full of love, and it is extremely easy to love reading it' VOGUE
'Chaos at its finest' STYLIST
'Easily 13/10 . . . Funny, lovely, romantic' MARIAN KEYES
The Rachel Incident was a #2 bestseller in Ireland in June 2023
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. S. BYATT
'She is undoubtedly one of the twentieth century's greatest American writers' OBSERVER
' ... a clear-eyed salute to the resilience of the human spirit and the innate hardiness of the immigrants' XAN BROOKS, GUARDIAN
'Willa Cather was a wordsmith of enormous talent' ROBERT SLAYTON, LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
'During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood . . . His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.'
My Antonia is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman's life on the Nebraska plains, seen through the eyes of her childhood friend, Jim Burden. The beautiful, free-spirited, wild-eyed girl captured Jim's imagination long ago and haunts him still, embodying for him the elemental spirit of the American frontier.
In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction.
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).
'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 Angelou
In 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 generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate' TONI MORRISON
Beauty; beauty. What was the good of beauty, once it was over? It left nothing behind it but acid regrets, and no heart at all to start fresh.'
Approaching the watershed of her fiftieth birthday, Fanny, having long ago divorced Mr Skeffington and dismissed him from her thoughts for many years, is surprised to find herself thinking of him often. While attempting to understand this invasion, she meets, through a series of coincidences and deliberate actions, all those other men whose hearts she broke. But their lives have irrevocably changed and Fanny is no longer the exquisite beauty with whom they were all once enchanted. If she is to survive, Fanny discovers, she must confront a greatly altered perception of her self.
With the delicate piquancy for which she is renowned, Elizabeth von Arnim here reveals the complexities involved in the process of ageing and in re-evaluating self-worth.
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace
The sun brightens in the east, reddening the blue-grey haze that marks the distant ocean. The vultures roosting on the hydro poles fan out their wings to dry them. the air smells faintly of burning. The waterless flood - a man-made plague - has ended the world.
But two young women have survived: Ren, a young dancer trapped where she worked, in an upmarket sex club (the cleanest dirty girls in town); and Toby, who watches and waits from her rooftop garden. Is anyone else out there?
'A MARVEL' RUMAAN ALAM
'MAGNIFICENT' NEW YORK TIMES
'A TRIUMPH' i
'SUBLIME' GUARDIAN
'DAZZLING' OBSERVER
When Chouette is born, Tiny's husband and family are devastated by her condition and strange appearance. Doctors tell them to expect the worst. Chouette won't learn to walk; she never speaks; she lashes out when frightened and causes chaos in public.
Tiny's husband wants to make her better but Tiny thinks their child is perfect the way she is. In her fierce self-possession, her untameable will, Chouette teaches Tiny to break free of expectations - no matter what it takes.
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
Acerbic, wisecracking and hilarious, this is the definitive essay collection from New York legend and satirist, Fran Lebowitz, star of Martin Scorsese's hit Netflix series, Pretend It's a City.
'The gold standard for intelligence, efficiency and humour. Now and forever' DAVID SEDARIS
'She's inexhaustible - her personality, her knowledge, her brilliance, most of all her humour' MARTIN SCORSESE
'The rare example of a legend living up to her own mythology. She really is THAT funny' HADLEY FREEMAN
Lebowitz turns her trademark caustic wit to the vicissitudes of life - from children ('rarely in the position to lend one a truly interesting sum of money') to landlords ('it is the solemn duty of every landlord to maintain an adequate supply of roaches'). And her attitude to work is the perfect antidote to our exhausting culture of self-betterment ('3.40pm. I consider getting out of bed. I reject the notion as being unduly vigorous. I read and smoke a bit more').
'Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things and small people talk about wine'
'Think before you speak. Read before you think'
'All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable'
'There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death'
'The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting
Lucy Entwhistle's beloved father has just died, and aged twenty-two, she finds herself alone in the world. Leaning against her garden gate, dazed and unhappy, she is disturbed by the sudden appearance of the perspiring Mr Wemyss.
This middle-aged man is also in mourning - for his wife, Vera, who has died in mysterious circumstances. Before Lucy can collect herself, Mr Wemyss has taken charge: of the funeral arrangements, of her kind Aunt Dot, but most of all of Lucy herself, body and soul. Elizabeth von Arnim's masterpiece, VERA is a forceful study of the power of men in marriage - and the weakness of women in love.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD
'Tragic and comic at the same time... an outrageous story, one that will break your heart' Sunday Independent
'A terrific story, grippingly told' Sunday Times
'I read The Glass Castle straight through in an evening, wearing an expression of slack-jawed amazement' Spectator
While Jeannette Walls was living on Park Avenue, covering the Academy Awards and attending black-tie parties at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her parents were squatting in an abandoned building on the Lower East Side.
Rex Walls, her father, was an ingenious adventurer and a hopeless alcoholic. Her mother was an artist who abhorred domestic routine and the chores of motherhood: 'Why should I cook a meal that will be gone in an hour when I can do a painting that will last forever?' Funny sad, quirky and loving, The Glass Castle is an almost incredible story of a nomadic, impoverished childhood.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING BRIE LARSON, WOODY HARRELSON AND NAOMI WATTS
INTRODUCED BY HILARY MANTEL
Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth - Sarah Waters
Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, fifteen-year old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of Paradise House . . .
After reading The Lady Irania, publishers Brace and Gilchrist are certain the novel will be a success, in spite of - perhaps because of - its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book - an elderly lady, romanticising behind lace curtains? A mustachioed rogue?
They were not expecting it to be the pale, serious teenage girl, sitting before them without a hint of irony in her soul.
*
'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' Elizabeth Bowen
'No writer has described the English middle classes with more gently devastating accuracy' Rebecca Abrams, Spectator
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.
'Erotic and absorbing . . . Written with startling power' New York Times Book Review
Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.
ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITERS TO HAVE EVER LIVED.
NOW A SUCCESSFUL FILM .
'This much-loved classic is above all a celebration of kindness and hope' KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE
'My all-time favourite classic children's author' JACQUELINE WILSON
'Edith Nesbit was endlessly surprising and inventive' FRANK COTTRELL-BOYCE
When their father is suddenly taken away, the children's lives change overnight. Unable to afford their London home, the family must move to a small cottage in the Yorkshire countryside. Hiding their sadness from their mother, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis roam the fields all day. Every morning they can be seen waving as the morning train roars past, imagining that it will can carry their love to their father, wherever he may be.
The trio become a familiar sight and their bravery and quick-thinking avert a railway disaster. There is a kind old gentleman passenger who never fails to wave back - little do the children realise how much his friendship will mean to them, especially in solving the mystery to their father's disappearance.
This collection of the best in children's literature, curated by Virago, will be coveted by children and adults alike. These are timeless tales with beautiful covers, that will be treasured and shared across the generations. Some titles you will already know; some will be new to you, but there are stories for everyone to love, whatever your age. Our list includes Nina Bawden (Carrie's War, The Peppermint Pig), Rumer Godden (An Episode of Sparrows), Joan Aiken (The Serial Garden, The Gift Giving,) E. Nesbit (The Psammead Trilogy, The Bastable Trilogy, The Railway Children), Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Little Princess,The Secret Garden) and Susan Coolidge (The What Katy Did Trilogy). Discover Virago Children's Classics.
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments
Charmaine sees an advertisement for a project called Positron that promises you a job, a place to live, a bed to sleep in - imagine how appealing that would be if you were working in a dive bar and living in your car. She and her husband, Stan, apply at once.
The only catch is that once you're in there, you can't get out.
No one writes the lust and the loves, the wickedness and the weakness of the human heart like the splendid Margaret Atwood.
'Margaret Atwood [is] a living legend' New York Times Book Review
'Gloriously madcap . . . You only pause in your laughter when you realise that, in its constituent parts, the world she depicts here is all too horribly plausible' Stephanie Merritt, Observer
'Her eye for the most unpredictable caprices of the human heart and her narrative fearlessness have made her one of the world's most celebrated novelists' Naomi Alderman, Guardian
'The bestselling author who shot to fame thirty years ago with The Handmaid's Tale is still at her darkly comic best' Sunday Times
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace
Laura Chase's older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following.
Sexually explicit for its time, The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe. By turns lyrical, outrageous, formidable, compelling and funny, this is a novel filled with deep humour and dark drama.
From her reflections on African American life and hardship in Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise, and her elegant tributes to dignitaries Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela (On the Pulse of Morning and His Day Is Done, respectively), every inspiring word of Maya Angelou's poetry is included in the pages of this volume.
FROM THE BESTSELLING WRITER OF REBECCA
'The House on the Strand is prime du Maurier . . . ' NEW YORK TIMES
'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN
'No other popular writer has so triumphantly defied classification . . . ' MARGARET FORSTER
When Dick Young's friend, Professor Magnus Lane offers him an escape from his troubles in the form of a new drug, Dick finds himself transported to fourteenth-century Cornwall. There, in the manor of Tywardreath, the domain of Sir Henry Champerhoune, he witnesses intrigue, adultery and murder.
The more time Dick spends consumed in the past, the more he withdraws from the modern world. With each dose of the drug, his body and mind become addicted to this otherworld and his attempts to change history bring terror to the present and put his own life in jeopardy.
