Faber Faber: 1353 books

What if every neuron in the human brain could be mapped and decoded? Every act of human behaviour catalogued and wholly understood? Elegy imagines a very-near future in which radical and unprecedented advances in medical science mean that it's possible to augment and extend life. Through the...

I shall shortly be eighty-eight. High time to be giving serious thought to the direction my life should be taking. In an upper-crust retirement home, Geoffrey Wythenshaw sits down to write his memoir. But he faces constant interruption from his fellow residents, their visiting relatives and the attending staff. Some of them seek his wisdom, others only distraction.

Tea's cold, lunch is late and the great Professor has turned out to be a fraud - for Uncle Vanya, life has gone wonky, it's gone to hell. Only one thing can save him - a glamorous woman's love. But she's not interested either. And what's worse, she's married to the Professor. Samuel...

I don't know what it is I'm going to do but I'm going to do something. I'm going to be someone. I am! I'm sick of just being me. I'm going to be someone else. Someone better. I'm going to make a difference. Three sisters, Orla, Marianne and Erin, dream of escaping their tedious suburban lives...

Don't be miserable, you wonderful woman; be a mermaid. There's the ocean; throw yourself in. Fall in love with some poor mortal and drag him down with you. Astonish us! On an isolated country estate, Sonia and her Uncle Vanya are committed to a life of ceaseless toil. But when the ageing invalid...

The Old Vic, one of the world's great theatres, opened in 1818 with rowdy melodrama and continued with Edmund Kean in Richard III howled down by the audience. One impresario, among the first of thirteen to go bankrupt there, fled to Milan and ran La Scala. In 1848 a chorus girl tried to murder the...

Ducdame was John Cowper Powys' fourth novel published in 1925. It is set in Dorset. The protagonist, Rook Ashover (a wonderfully Powysian name) is an introverted young squire with a dilemma: to go on loving his mistress, Netta Page, or, make a respectable marriage and produce an heir.Of his...

JOY is the story of a family across four generations centered on the girl who becomes the woman who founds a business dynasty and, in the process, recovers her childhood magic and finds her place in the world. Betrayal, treachery, the loss of innocence and the scars of love, pave the road in...

'This is a fan's eye-view of Paul Gascoigne - and fans, as we know, are expert at reassembling dashed hopes...'In 1987 Ian Hamilton - acclaimed poet, biographer and Tottenham fan - was smitten from afar by the impish skills of Newcastle United's Paul Gascoigne. When 'Gazza' duly signed for...

Harriet Norton won't stop crying. Her parents, Ann and Thomas, are being driven close to insanity and only one thing will help. Mysteriously, their infant daughter will only calm when she's under the ancient trees of Bleasdale forest. The Nortons sell their town-house and set up home in an isolated...

Inspired by Dostoyevsky's short story, The Double tells the story of Simon, a timid man, scratching out an isolated existence in an indifferent world. He is overlooked at work, scorned by his mother, and ignored by the woman of his dreams. He feels powerless to change any of these things. The arrival...

In 1988 Hugo Williams began to pen his 'Freelance' column for the Times Literary Supplement: a window that allowed him to exhibit the full panoply of his gifts as travel writer, literary portraitist, working poet, and all-round chronicler of the curious existence of the contemporary writer. Freelancing...

A comprehensive guide to the techniques of orchestral playing and the development of non-professional orchestras, Orchestral Performance covers all areas of orchestral music-making - instrumental technique and combination, ensemble, layout, repertoire and presentation. Christopher Adey - renowned...

The last of the three trilogies authored by David Stacton (1923-68) was described by the author as 'an intermezzo designed to deal with sexual relations'. After Old Acquaintance (1962) and Sir William (1963) came Kaliyuga (1965), described by Stacton as 'the story of the relations of Siva and Kali,...