Picador

Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. The characters go to the same schools. They eat at the same restaurants. They have sex with the same boys and girls. They buy from the same dealers. Fusing voices into an intense, impressionistic narrative that blurs genders, generations and even identities, these stories capture the lives of a group of people, connected in the way only people in L.A. can be — suffering from nothing less than the death of the soul. A writer at the peak of his powers... The book takes us from the first to the seventh circles of hell, from Salinger to de Sade. (Will Self). Ellis has the ability to capture modern reality with the ferocity of a collector driving a pin through a social butterfly. (Guardian). The Informers is spare, austere, elegantly designed, telling in detail, coolly ferocious, sardonic in its humor; every vestige of authorial sentiment is expunged. (New York Times).

It is 1660. The King is back, memories of the Civil War still rankle. In rural Westmorland, artist Alice Ibbetson has become captivated by the rare Lady's Slipper orchid. She is determined to capture its unique beauty for posterity, even if it means stealing the flower from the land of the recently converted Quaker, Richard Wheeler. Fired by his newfound faith, the former soldier Wheeler feels bound to track down the missing orchid. Meanwhile, others are eager to lay hands on the flower, and have their own powerful motives. Margaret Poulter, a local medicine woman, is seduced by the orchid's mysterious herbal powers, while Geoffrey Fisk, Alice's patron and former comrade-in-arms of Wheeler, sees the valuable plant as a way to repair his ailing fortunes and cure his own agonizing illness. Fearing that Wheeler and his friends are planning revolution, Fisk sends his son Stephen to spy on the Quakers, only for the young man to find his loyalties divided as he befriends the group he has been sent to investigate. Then, when Alice Ibbetson is implicated in a brutal murder, she is imprisoned along with the suspected anti-royalist Wheeler. As Fisk's sanity grows ever more precarious, and Wheeler and Alice plot their escape, a storm begins to brew, from which no party will escape unscathed. Vivid, gripping and intensely atmospheric, The Lady's Slipper is a novel about beauty, faith and loyalty. It marks the emergence of an exquisite new voice in historical fiction.

The centre of the world: 1990s Manhattan. Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn't been and with people he doesn't know. On the eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York history, he's living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another. Now it's time to move to the next stage. But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind. 'A master stylist with hideously interesting new-fangled manners and the heart of an old-fashioned moralist' Observer 'Gets under the skin of our celebrity culture in a way that is both illuminating and frightening' Daily Telegraph 'Does for the cold, minimal '90s what American Psycho did for the Wall Street greed of the '80s. You name it, he manages to get it all in' Vogue 'Brilliant... He is fast becoming a writer of real American genius' GQ.

Twenty-five years on from «Less Than Zero», we pick up again with Clay. In 1985, Bret Easton Ellis shocked, stunned and disturbed with «Less Than Zero», his «extraordinarily accomplished first novel» («New Yorker»), successfully chronicling the frightening consequences of unmitigated hedonism within the ranks of the ethically bereft youth of 80s Los Angeles. Twenty-five years later, Ellis returns to those same characters — to Clay and the band of infamous teenagers whose lives weave sporadically through his — but now, they face an even greater period of disaffection: their own middle age. Clay seems to have moved on — he's become a successful screenwriter — but when he returns from New York to Los Angeles, to help cast his new movie, he's soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his vulnerable former girlfriend, is now married to Trent — still a bisexual philanderer — and their Beverly Hills parties attract excessive levels of fame and fortune. Clay's childhood friend Julian is a recovering addict running an ultra-discreet, high-class escort service, and their old dealer Rip, reconstructed and face-lifted nearly beyond recognition, is involved in activities far more sinister than those of his notorious past. After a meeting with a gorgeous but talentless actress determined to win a role in his movie, Clay finds himself connected with Kelly Montrose, a producer whose gruesomely violent death is suddenly very much the talk of the town. As his seemingly endless proclivity for betrayal leads him to be drawn further and further into this ominous case it looks like he will face far more serious consequences than ever before.

'I was thinking; my mind was running at top speed, scanning and sorting my options. They ranged all the way from Dumb and Dangerous to Crazy, Evil, and utterly wrong from the start... stand back. We are on the brink. Yes. I have an idea.' When Hunter S. Thompson has an idea, you just have to listen and he shares many of his unique ideas in this collection of journalism, social commentary, short fiction and autobiography. Divided into sections by decade, Songs of the Doomed begins with a furious condemnation of the US justice system and ends with the author's own version of the events that led to his extraordinary court case. Stopping off at the infamous summit conference in Elko, Illinois; Saigon in 1975 (the war zone Thompson was fired while en route to); and Palm Beach in the eighties for the Pulitzer divorce, here in true Gonzo fashion is the long strange trip from Kennedy to Nixon to Quayle. 'Mr Thompson's best work of the past three decades' New York Times Book Review 'There are many hideously funny stories in this collection. Thompson writing on mescalin, staying on for the fall of Saigon, explaining what it must be like to be a multimillionaire in Palm Beach...' Independent on Sunday 'Dead funny... That our guru has made it this far merits drinks and dynamite all round at the Woody Creek Road and Gun Club (and spiritually affiliated North London branches). That he is still alive, and at large, defies medical and legal beliefs' Andy Kershaw, Literary Review 'Proves that you can't keep the old bastard quiet... a superb offering' City Limits.

'Most smart people tend to feel queasy when the conversation turns to things like 'certain death' and 'total failure' and the idea of 'a doomed generation'. But not me. I am comfortable with these themes'. Hunter S. Thompson, celebrated author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has been writing a weekly column for the San Francisco Examiner for the last two years. Those columns are collected here to offer a chronicle of the adventures of a Generation of Swine. The incomparable 'Dr Gonzo' has journeyed no small distance in search of intelligent life and reports back, instead, on the demented state of current events. He keeps tabs on the 1998 presidential race, quotes from the Bible (reference books in hotel rooms are supplied exclusively by the Gideons) and asks why the President appears to be a hundred and twenty-eight years old. 'He is working from a dementia that no one in his right mind would want to share. It is the dementia, however, that makes Thompson great' — Playboy. 'His hallucinated vision strikes one as having been, after all, the sanest' — Nelson Algren.

One midsummer's day in Arden, the Godley family gather at their dying father's bedside, a collection of troubled individuals and fraying relationships. The gods, those mischievous spirits, look on silently; unable to resist intervening, they spy, tease and seduce their mortal playthings. Old Adam Godley's time on earth seems to be running out, and his mind runs to disquieting memories. Little does he realize, as he lies mute but alert in the Sky Room, what mischief the gods are capable of. Overflowing with a bawdy humour, and a deep and refreshing clarity of insight, The Infinities is at once a gloriously earthy romp and a delicately poised, infinitely wise look at the terrible and wonderful plight of being human. In electrifying prose, Banville captures the aching intensity, the magic and enchantment, of a single midsummer's day in Arden.

'Hunter S. Thompson is to drug-addled, stream-of-consciousness, psycho-political black humor what Forrest Gump is to idiot savants' Philadelphia Inquirer Since his blazing 1972 opus, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson has reported the election story in his truly inimitable, just-short-of-libel style. In Better than Sex, Thompson hits the dusty trail again without leaving home yet manages to deliver a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign, in all of its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory. Complete with faxes sent to and received by candidate Clinton's top aides, and 100 per cent pure gonzo screeds on Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Oliver North, here is the most true-blue campaign tell-all ever penned by man or beast. '[Thompson] delivers yet another of his trademark cocktail mixes of unbelievable tales and dark observations... Packed with egocentric anecdotes, musings and reprints of memos, faxes and scrawled handwritten notes' Los Angeles Daily News.

For decades, Hunter S. Thompson galvanized American journalism with his acerbic wit, radical ideas, and gonzo tactics. He continued his reign as 'the Unabomber of contemporary letters' («Time») with «Hey Rube». Fear, greed, and action abound in this hilarious, thought-provoking compilation as Thompson doles out searing indictments and uproarious rants while providing brilliant commentary on politics, sex, and sports — at times all in the same column. Filled with critics' favorites, as well as never-before-published columns, «Hey Rube» follows Thompson through the beginning of the new century. «Hey Rube» gives us a look at the gonzo journalist in his most organic form — unbridled, astute, and irreverent. 'Thompson is a genuinely unique figure in American journalism, a superb comic writer and a ferociously outspoken social and political critic' — «Washington Post». 'Punctuated by moments of brilliant iconoclasm, as well as profound questions for our age' — «San Francisco Chronicle».

In the sweet shop Willy Chapman was free, absolved from all responsibility, and he ran his sweet shop like his life — quietly, steadfastly, devotedly. It was a bargain struck between Chapman and his beautiful, emotionally injured wife — a bargain based on unexpressed, inexpressible love and on a courageous acceptance of life's deprivation... threatened only by Dorry, their clever, angry, unforgiving daughter.

Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, this novel traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

'Perfectly controlled, superbly written. Waterland is original, compelling and narration of the highest order' Guardian In the years since its first publication, in 1983, Waterland has established itself as one of the classics of twentieth-century British literature: a visionary tale of England's Fen country; a sinuous meditation on the workings of history; and a family story startling in its detail and universal in its reach. This edition includes an introduction, by the author, written to celebrate the book's 25th anniversary. 'Graham Swift has mapped his Waterland like a new Wessex. He appropriates the Fens as Moby Dick did whaling or Wuthering Heights the moors. This is a beautiful, serious and intelligent novel, admirably ambitious and original' Observer 'A 300-page tour de force... A burst of exuberant fictive energy' Evening Standard 'Waterland is a formidably intelligent book, animated by an impressive, angry pity at what human creatures are capable of doing to one another in the name of love and need. The most powerful novel I have read for some time' New York Review of Books.

This is Volume Three of the «Border Trilogy». In «Cities of the Plain», two men marked by the boyhood adventures of «All the Pretty Horses» and «The Crossing» now stand together, between their vivid pasts and uncertain futures, to confront a country changing beyond recognition. In the fall of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are cowboys on a New Mexico ranch encroached upon from the north by the military. On the southern horizon are the mountains of Mexico, where one of the men is drawn again and again, in this story of friendships and passion, to a love as dangerous as it is inevitable. 'In a lovely and terrible landscape of natural beauty and impending loss we find John Grady; a young cowboy of the old school, trusted by men and horses, and a fragile young woman, whose salvation becomes his obsession ...McCarthy makes the sweeping plains a miracle' — «Scotsman». 'This haunting, deeply felt novel completes one of the literary masterworks of the 1990s' — «Daily Telegraph». 'The completed trilogy emerges as a landmark in American literature' — «Guardian».

This is Volume Two of the «Border Trilogy». '»The Crossing», together with its predecessor «All the Pretty Horses», towers over most contemporary fiction. An American epic infused with a grand solemnity' — «Sunday Times». Set on the south-western ranches in the years before the Second World War, «The Crossing» follows the fortunes of sixteen-year-old Billy and his younger brother Boyd. Fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family's property, Billy captures the animal — but rather than kill it, sets out impulsively for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from. When Billy comes back to his own home he finds himself and his world irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and once again the border beckons with its desolate beauty and cruel promise. 'McCarthy writes prose as clean as a bullet cutting through the air and constructs tales as compelling as any you will read ...They are stories about people as real as the land they ride and as disturbing as the rituals they enact' — «Daily Telegraph».

Set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, «The Orchard Keeper» is an early classic from one of America's finest and most celebrated authors. It tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father. Cormac McCarthy's debut novel is a magnificent evocation of an American landscape, and of a lost American time. 'The feeling for the land and seasons is so intense as to be part of the story and there are scenes one will never forget...A complicated and evocative exposition of the transience of life' — «Harper's». 'A true American original' — «Newsweek».

By the author of the critically acclaimed «Border Trilogy», «Outer Dark» is a novel at once mythic and starkly evocative, set in an unspecified place in Appalachia sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; the brother leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution. 'McCarthy is a master stylist, perhaps without equal in American letters...In his hands, everything is done with consummate skill' — «Village Voice». 'McCarthy has made the fabulous real, the ordinary mysterious' — «New York Times». 'A profound parable that ultimately speaks to any society in any time' — «Time».

This compelling novel has as its protagonist Cornelius Suttree, living alone and in exile in a disintegrating houseboat on the wrong side of the Tennessee River close by Knoxville. He stays at the edge of an outcast community inhabited by eccentrics, criminals and the poverty-stricken. Rising above the physical and human squalor around him, his detachment and wry humour enable him to survive dereliction and destitution with dignity. ''Suttree» contains a humour that is Faulknerian in its gentle wryness, and a freakish imaginative flair reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor' — «Times Literary Supplement». ''Suttree» marks McCarthy's closest approach to autobiography and is probably the funniest and most unbearably sad of his books' — Stanley Booth.

Bristling with inspired observations and wild anecdotes, this collection offers unique insight into the voice and mind of the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson, as recorded over the decades in the pages of Playboy, the Paris Review, Esquire, in various lectures, and in television appearances, many in print for the first time. Fearless and unsparing, the interviews detail some of the most storied episodes of Thompson's life: his savage beating at the hands of the Hell's Angels, his talking football with Nixon on the 1972 Campaign Trail ('the only time in twenty years of listening to the treacherous bastard that I knew he wasn't lying'); his razor-sharp insight into the Bush-Cheney administration, his unlikely run for Sheriff of Aspen, and his successful public battle, during the last years of his life, to free an innocent woman from prison. In addition, Hunter Thompson's passionate tirades about journalism, culture, drugs, guns, and the law showcase his singular voice at its fiercest. Complete with an exclusive introduction by author, journalist, and cultural critic Christopher Hitchens, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom genuinely embraces the brilliance of Hunter S. Thompson — his life, his voice, and his legacy — to provide an enduring portrait of the great gonzo journalist. 'Four years after his death, the rapid-fire wit and venom of Thompson's writing is undiminished. Ancient Gonzo Wisdom features classic HST interviews' — GQ.

Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them.

Pat Peoples has a theory that his life is actually a movie produced by God, and that his God-given mission in life is to become emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure a happy ending — which, for Pat, means the return of his estranged wife Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents, however, everything seems changed.

This is Volume One of the «Border Trilogy». 'A uniquely brilliant book... told in language as subtly beautiful as its desert setting. One of the most important pieces of American writing of our time' — Stephen Amidon, «Sunday Times». John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood. «All the Pretty Horses» is an acknowledged masterpiece and a grand love story: a novel about childhood passing, along with innocence and a vanished American age. Steeped in the wisdom that comes only from loss, it is a magnificent parable of responsibility, revenge and survival. 'A darkly shining work... executed with consummate skill and much subtlety — the effect is magnificent' — John Banville, «Observer». 'An exhilarating, exceptional novel' — «Spectator». 'In a single stride it takes McCarthy to the forefront of contemporary American fiction. All the Pretty Horses is indisputably a masterpiece' — «Financial Times».

Lester Ballard, a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman dispossessed on his ancestral land, is released from jail and allowed to haunt the hill country of East Tennessee, preying on the population with his strange lusts.

An academic sits alone in his college room thinking about the people he has lost. Powerful memories crowd in on him — childhood days in Paris; his exuberant, glamorous mother; his mysterious father; and the brash young American who becomes his step-father. Mingled with this emerges a tender portrait of his relationship with his actress wife. Ever After is a poignant elegy to lost faith and lost hope. It is also a powerful affirmation of love. 'Once in a precious while you read a novel which, every few chapters, makes you shiver with self-recognition. Ever After is such a novel' — Daily Mail. 'Swift is set apart by his acute observation and thrilling exactness of description... Exceptional' — The Times.

Featuring several mass-murdering authors, two fraternal writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring and a poet who crafts his lines in the air with sky writing, «Nazi Literature in the Americas» details the lives of a rich cast of characters from one of the most extraordinarily fecund imaginations in world literature. Written with acerbic wit and virtuosic flair, this encyclopaediccavlacade of fictional pan-American authors is the terrifyingly humorous and remarkably inventive masterpiece which made Bolano famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world. 'One of the most exhilarating, intense and dangerous voices to emerge from South America... «Nazi Literature in the Americas» is a parade of delusional, mediocre, vicious and pitiable poetasters, a scabrous parlour game that reveals much about literature, power and complicity. Very funny indeed' — «Scotland on Sunday». 'The triumphant posthumous entrance of Roberto Bolano into the English-language literary firmament has been one of the sensations of the decade' — «Sunday Times». 'The best and weirdest kind of literary game... This artful alternate history of modern literature, stitched together from loose ends, half-told stories and deft episodes of pastiche, is a strangely profound place to get lost' — «Financial Times».