Beryl Bainbridge: 20 books

Three unforgettable novels from the “subversive and ever-mischievous imagination” of a celebrated British author and five-time Man Booker Prize nominee (The New York Times). With crisp prose and sardonic wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself in the landscape...

Three darkly comic novels from the two-time Whitbread Award winner whose “masterful restraint . . . reveals an author in complete control of her artistry” (The Guardian). With taut prose and mordant wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself as “one of the...

The complete short stories—including six previously uncollected works and one novella—of award-winning British literary giant Beryl Bainbridge. From one of the United Kingdom’s most famed female novelists come nineteen different takes on the often cruel, usually comic, and utterly strange...

The dramatic, fictionalized account of Robert Falcon Scott’s famed and fatal expedition to Antarctica by one of Britain’s best-loved authors. Departing from Cardiff in 1910, the Terra Nova entered dark waters and headed south. On board were Petty Officer Edgar “Taff” Evans, Dr. Edward...

Named by the Observer as “one of the 100 greatest novels of all time,” this dark comedy with a disturbing twist follows two working-class women in 1970s London. Unlikely friends Brenda and Freda share a rundown room in London and toil away at an Italian factory pasting labels onto wine...

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: In postwar Liverpool, a teenager joins a theater troupe to escape her working-class life—and is drawn into a darker world. From one of Britain’s best-loved novelists, this is the story of Stella Bradshaw, an orphaned sixteen-year-old with dreams of...

Winner of the Whitbread Literary Award: A darkly humorous tale about a 1970s dinner party gone terribly wrong by one of Britain’s most renowned authors. Edward is normally a cautious man, especially when it comes to his mistress, Binny. But he feels bad that his lover never gets to enjoy...

Social dysfunction meets dangerous perversion in this black comedy about two misfit families camping in the Welsh woods. George McFarley, a six-foot-eight hulk of a man obsessed with the Holocaust, and his assistant, Balfour, an unbearably shy stutterer, are the unconventional hosts of a weekend...

A group of eccentric****friends makes a mess of their shared holiday in this witty novel from one of Britain’s best-loved authors. When Claude stumbles upon an old photo, memories of a weekend spent in the company of his friends come back in full force. In the snapshot are Lily, a thick-ankled...

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: This psychological drama set in Liverpool during WWII follows the courtship of a US soldier and an English working-class girl. Rita is a passive and naïve seventeen-year-old who has been raised by two middle-aged aunts: Nellie, a curmudgeonly dressmaker...

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A masterwork of love, guilt, and friendship set in Victorian Liverpool and Eastern Europe during the Crimean War.   Photography is the common thread weaving together three different points of view that span the years from 1846 to 1854. The first “plate” opens...

The infamous Parker–Hulme murder case inspired this frightening tale of adolescent transgression in an English seaside town. When a thirteen-year-old girl returns from boarding school to her small hometown in Merseyside for summer break, her best friend, Harriet, is not back yet, and she’s...

This historical novel set during the eighteenth century recounts the tumultuous final years of famed English lexicographer and poet Samuel Johnson. In 1764, Britain’s greatest man of letters—the writer of the first English dictionary—shut himself in his room and refused to come out. Exhausted...

In the tumultuous spring of 1968 a young English woman, Rose, travels from London to the United States to meet a man she knows as Washington Harold. In her suitcase are a polka dot dress and a one-way ticket. In an America recently convulsed by the April assassination of Martin Luther King and subsequent...