12 Fiction 70339 CASSANDRA AND FICTION


Some things can only be said in fiction, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t true.


- Aaron Latham


70433 VINTAGE VAMPIRE STORIES


edited by Robert Eighteen- Bisang and Richard Dalby Here are rare vampire tales from the 19th and early 20th centuries collected for the first time in one volume. They include tales by Pu Songling, William H. G. Kingston, Mary Fortune, G. J. Whyte-Melville, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Professor P. Jones, R. Murray Gilchrist plus


the more famous Bram Stoker, Phil Robinson, Dick Donovan and Sabine Baring-Gould. Lost to the public in the pages of defunct newspapers, out-of-print magazines and dusty Victorian anthologies, these stories have been resurrected for a new generation of vampire lovers. The macabre tales were originally published from 1679-1909 and include Bram Stoker’s handwritten notes for Dracula (Count Vampire). 318pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £4.50


70017 BLUE MOVIE by Terry Southern


Fuelled by drugs, monstrous egos and rampant libidos, the novel is a hilarious, wildly erotic and biting satire on Hollywood. Terry Southern was one of the most famous writers of the 1960s and was screenwriter of Easy Rider and Barbarella amongst others. He was also a novelist and counterculture legend. He died in 1995. King B is


the Oscar winning director who has filmed everything. Sid Krassman is the producer who has never underestimated the lowest paid of the American public. Angela Sterling is the sex symbol who wants to do something ‘serious’. Together they are determined to film the dirtiest and most expensive pornographic movie ever. When the Vatican send in their flying God Squad, the production is moved to Lichtenstein. Regarded as ‘The best Hollywood novel’, this man writes mean, coolly deliberate and murderous prose. 256pp in paperback, facsimile reprint of the 1970 orginal. £10 NOW £4


70505 A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN


by Marina Lewycka Winner of the Bollinger Everyman prize for Comic Fiction and shortlisted for the Orange Prize, this is an extremely funny read which we can recommend. ‘Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He


was 84 and she was 36. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of slouthed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.’ Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. The sisters uncover 50 years of Europe’s darkest history as they go back to the roots they would much rather forget. A funny and touching riot of lust and greed. 325pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


70513 WE ARE ALL MADE


OF GLUE by Marina Lewycka Georgie Sinclair’s life is coming unstuck. Her husband left her, her son is obsessed with the End of the World and now her elderly neighbour Mrs Shapiro has decided they are related. Or so the hospital informs her when Mrs Shapiro has an accident and names Georgie next of kin. This however is not a case of a quick ward visit - Mrs Shapiro has a large rickety


house full of stinky cats that need looking after and a pair of estate agents that seem intent on swindling from her. Plus there are the ‘Uselesses’ trying to repair it (uselessly). And then there is the social worker who wants to put her in a nursing home, not to mention a painful past. ‘A big-hearted confection of the comic and the poignant.’ 420pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


70511 TWO CARAVANS by Marina Lewycka


A field of strawberries in Kent, and sitting in it two caravans, one for the men and one for the women. The residents are from all over - miner’s son Andiy is from the old Ukraine, while sexy young Irina is from the new. They eye each other warily. There are the Poles, Tomasz and Yola, two Chinese girls, and Emanuel from Malawi. They are all here to pick


strawberries in England’s green and pleasant land, but England is not so pleasant for immigrants. Not with Russian gangster-wannabees like Vulk, who has taken a shine to Irina and thinks kidnapping is a wooing strategy. And so Andiy, who really doesn’t fancy Irina, (honest), must set off in search of the girl he is not in love with. With closely observed insights all the humour of Tractors is here. 310pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


70775 MARINA LEWYCKA: Set of Three


by Marina Lewycka Buy all three and save more. £23.97 NOW £9.50


JANE: A Jane Austen Novel by Jill Pitkeathley


They were beloved sisters and the best of friends. Yet Jane and Cassandra Austen suffered the same fate as many of the women of their era. Forced to spend their lives dependent on relatives, both financially and emotionally, the sisters spent their time together trading secrets, challenging each


other’s opinions, and rehearsing the myriad of domestic dramas that Jane would later bring to fruition in her popular novels. For each sister suffered through painful romantic disappointments - tasting passion, knowing great love and then losing it - while the other stood witness. Upon Jane’s death, Cassandra deliberately destroyed her personal letters, thereby closing the door to the private life of the renowned novelist - until now. Here the author Jill Pitkeathley ingeniously re-imagines the unique and intimate relationship between two extraordinary siblings. A companion to Dearest Cousin Jane code 70348. 270pp in paperback with a useful guide to the Austen family. £9.95 NOW £4.50


70348 DEAREST COUSIN


JANE: A Jane Austen Novel by Jill Pitkeathley Drawing on historical fact, the author paints a luminous portrait of the true-life cousin of a literary legend, from her flirtatious younger years to her profound influence on Jane Austen. Outrageous, precocious, free spirited and seductive, Countess Eliza de Feuillide has an unquenchable thirst for life. Rumoured to have been


born of a mad love affair between her mother and the great Warren Hastings of the East India Company, Eliza sees her world as her playground, filled with grand galas, theatre and romance. Losing her only child at an early age and widowed when her husband, a dashing French Count, is claimed by the guillotine during the dark days of the Reign of Terror, Eliza is determined to remain unfettered. It is this passionate spirit she brings to a simple country parsonage and into the world of a quiet and unassuming young writer named Jane Austen. 276pp in paperback. Remainder mark. £9.99 NOW £4.50


70101 SKETCHES OF


ENGLISH CHARACTER by Catherine Gore


Born in 1799, Catherine Gore as a child wrote poetry and embarked on a prolific writing career that was to last more than three decades and produce more than 60 published works. Her novels, noted for their wit, were very popular at the time. Best known for her novels about high society, Sketches is a reaction to what she saw as the lack of


individuality in Victorian society. In a series of witty and observant short stories, she describes what she believes to be the stereotypical figures of Victorian life. From the interfering Chaperone getting in the way of the Debutante’s romantic expectations to the overblown pomposity of the family butler who runs the household with an iron fist but ingratiates himself with the master, Catherine Gore brings to life the characters that best denote her generation of English men and women. 190pp in paperback. £10 NOW £6


70500 THE RESCUE MAN by Anthony Quinn


In the summer of 1939 historian Tom Baines is at work on a study of Liverpool’s architectural past. Like the rest of the country, he is distracted by the ominous rumblings from Europe. If war should come, will the buildings and streets that he documents survive? Orphaned as a child and now approaching 40 with no prospects of a family of his own, Tom is a man emotionally adrift.


But his faltering project receives a boost when a photographer Richard Tanqueray and his wife Bella befriend him, and together they work against the clock of a rapidly contracting peacetime. A further preoccupation takes hold when he begins to read the long forgotten journals of a brilliant young architect Peter Eames, a disciple of Ruskin. Eames’s own legacy will have unexpected reverberations 70 years later when war comes and Baines joins a Heavy Rescue Team. The recreation of wartime Liverpool contrasts with the city of Eames’s Victorian journals as the novel staggers towards a wrenching and unforgettable conclusion. 311pp in paperback. £11.99 NOW £4


70407 THE ELEPHANT’S


JOURNEY: A Novel by José Saramago In 1551, King João of Portugal decides to give Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present, an elephant named Solomon, along with his keeper, Subhro. The two have been living in dismal conditions, forgotten in a corner of the palace grounds. When it occurs to the king that an elephant might


be an appropriate gift, everyone rushes to get them ready. Subhro is given two new suits of clothes, and Solomon a long-overdue scrub. Accompanied by the archduke, his new bride and the royal guard, our unlikely heroes traverse a continent riven by the Reformation and civil war. They make their way through the cities of northern Italy, Genoa, Piacenza, Mantua, Verona, Venice and Trent, where the Council of Trent is in session. Then they brave the Alps and the terrifying Isarco and Brenner passes, sail across the Mediterranean Sea and up the Inn River. Elephants, it turns out, are natural sailors. At last, they make their grand entry into the imperial city of Vienna where the elephant, on the very day he arrives, saves the life of a child. A simple story, told with subtlety and grace, and filled with unexpectedly philosophical thoughts. 209 pages. $24 NOW £6


Bibliophile Books Unit 5 Datapoint, 6 South Crescent, London E16 4TL TEL: 020 74 74 24 74


70231 RITUAL IN THE DARK


by Colin Wilson


The author describes this, the first work he ever started - although it took him 12 years to finish, while writing other things - as ‘my most solidly constructed and satisfactory novel... my own favourite’. In his preface, he stresses the importance of this work in his development as a writer. It concerns a young man, Gerard Sorme, who becomes


accidentally involved with an older man he gradually comes to suspect of being a sex-killer. Whitechapel, where Jack the Ripper killed five prostitutes, is the scene of the murders. But the killer is also a homosexual and seeks a relationship with the young man. Sorme lives a borderline existence in cheap flats, eating at workman’s cafés. He soon finds himself moving into a murky world where there is a constant dichotomy between dreams and reality. The author is now a leading figure in the British and American literary scenes and has written over 80 books, many of them hugely successful, so this glimpse into his first steps as a writer is particularly exciting. 416 pages. £7.99 NOW £3.50


69308 THE VAMPYRE, THE WEREWOLF AND OTHER


GOTHIC TALES OF HORROR by John Polidori and others A 19th century medley of the macabre, here are seven blood- chilling tales featuring a cast of demons, doppelgangers and other beastly creatures to haunt your dreams. The lead story has influenced generations of fantasy fiction writers and is one of the first tales ever written in the romantic


vampire genre. The story begins as a gentleman travelling in Greece falls in love with a local beauty. When she warns him of vampires, he scoffs at her fears, until he is caught in the forest one night and finds someone at his throat. This fiendishly good collection continues with Clemence Houseman’s The Werewolf, in which a white-robed maiden with a thirst for blood encounters twin brothers and executes a diabolical plan. Other tales include Monos and Daimonos, The Curse and The Victim. 118pp in bargain softback. £6.99 NOW £3


70349 DEATH IN THE


ANDES by Mario Vargas Llosa The Nobel Prize winner has here been translated by Edith Grossman and is known as one of Peru’s best novelists. In a remote Andean village, three men have disappeared. Peruvian Army Corporal Lituma and his deputy Tomás have been dispatched to investigate and to guard the town from the Shining Path guerrillas they assume are responsible. But


the townspeople do not trust the officers, creating their own theories as to what forces claimed the bodies of the missing men. To pass the time, and to cope with their homesickness, Tomás entertains Lituma nightly with the sensuous, surreal tale of his precarious love affair with a wayward prostitute. His stories are mixed with the ongoing mystery of the missing men. A fantastically picturesque landscape of Indians and Llamas, snowy peaks, hunger and violence in a suspenseful story and a political allegory. 276pp in paperback. $15 NOW £4


70353 DREAM OF FAIR TO


MIDDLING WOMEN: A Novel by Samuel Beckett edited by Eoin O’Brien and Edith Fournier


Beckett did not allow this work to be published during his lifetime and, when he referred to it, it was generally in derogatory terms as ‘the chest into which I threw my wild thoughts’. However, if we consider how harsh he was about Waiting for Godot, a play that had


revolutionised contemporary theatre, was universally hailed as a masterpiece and was constantly being performed around the world, it can readily be imagined how unrelenting his judgement could be of his earlier work. Written in summer 1932, youthfully exuberant and visibly influenced by James Joyce, the book is a piece of extraordinary virtuosity. Beckett is already delighting in the wordplay and sheer joy of language that mark his later oeuvres. Above all, the story brims with the humour that, like brief stabs of sunlight, pierces the darkness of his vision. It serves as a wonderful introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning author and offers a rare and revealing portrait of the artist’s life when he was a young man. When he submitted it to publishers, all of them found it too literary, too scandalous or too risky. What a pity, and what we would all have missed had it not been for this edition. 241 pages with silk bookmark.


$30 NOW £6


70713 MY DRIVER by Maggie Gee


The book tells the story of Vanessa, a plucky but accident-prone writer, who flies from London to Uganda for an African writers’ conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, a Ugandan named Mary, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala’s up- market Sheraton Hotel, who has secretly summoned Vanessa’s beloved ex-husband Trevor, a


plumber, to her home village to build a new well. Mary’s son, Jamil, is missing. Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. Farce teeters on the edge of something much darker when she quarrels with her driver and, at the same time, a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from the Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary find her son? What has the plumber to do with it? Read on! A sharp-edged 321 pages. £12.99 NOW £3.50


e-mail: orders@bibliophilebooks.com 69625 PUPPET ON A


CHAIN by Alistair Maclean The classic thriller which will get your heart pumping triple time. Paul Sherman of Interpol’s Narcotics Bureau flies to Amsterdam on the trail of a dope king. With enormous skill, the atmosphere is built up - Amsterdam with its canals and high houses, stolid police, psychopaths, women in distress


and above all, murder. 314pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


69624 LAST FRONTIER by Alistair Maclean Dr. Jennings, a noted scientist in possession of a precious secret, has gone over to the Soviet Union. It’s Michael Reynolds’ mission to get him back. To penetrate behind the Iron Curtain and reach his quarry is difficult enough, but to bring out a man uncertain, elderly and too well known is impossible. Until Reynolds discovers, within that terrifying organisation, there are men ready and able to help. These dedicated Hungarian patriots, resourceful and when necessary, as ruthless as their enemies, could be the key to his success in this deadliest of missions. 410pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3.50


69626 SOUTH BY JAVA HEAD by Alistair Maclean February 1942. Singapore lies burning and shattered, defenceless before the conquering hordes of the Japanese Army, as the last boat slips out of the harbour and into the South China Sea. On board are a desperate group of people, each with a secret to guard. Dawn sees them far out to sea but with the first murderous dive bombers already aimed at their ship, an ordeal begins that few are to survive. Soon it becomes a desperate battle of wills and a battle of wits to stay alive as they journey south by Java Head. 50th anniversary edition in 433 page paperback.


£6.99 NOW £3.50


68890 THE LONELY SEA by Alistair Maclean This volume includes two new stories which spans the master storyteller’s entire career and collects together all his stories of the sea. It begins with The Dileas, Saint George and the Dragon, Rawalpindi, The Sinking of the Bismark, Lancastria, City of Benares and The Gold Watch and ends with the two new stories, The Black Storm and The Good


Samaritan. By a magnificent storyteller. 294pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3


70705 ICE PEOPLE by Maggie Gee


It is the middle of the 21st century, and the next Ice Age has suddenly sent global warming into reverse. Saul is one of the Ice People, the threatened peoples of the Northern Hemisphere who, watching their world freeze over, try to move south towards the equator. Set in the near future, the novel imagines not a globally warmed world, but an


Earth slowly returning to aridity and cold. A universal freeze has also descended on relationships between men and women who live in morbid segregation, with feathered robots as sexual partners. In a neat reversal of First World/Third World assumptions, Africa’s relative warmth offers a last hope. The novel charts one man’s struggle to rescue his alienated son and bring him to where the sun shines. A gripping fictional realisation infused with poetic intensity. 319pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


70026 EATING AIR: A Novel by Pauline Melville


This unusual novel is both comic and terrifying, satirical and poetic at the same time. It concerns Ella, a beautiful dancer with the Royal Ballet who, in the 1970s, falls in love with Donny, a rebel and free spirit. They move into a household of political radicals and become casually drawn into extremism. When the infiltration of Special Branch leads to a violent crime, Ella is forced into self- imposed exile in Brazil. At the time of her return over 30 years later, a new kind of terrorism is rife. She is re- united with a former housemate who is torn over whether to join Islamic extremists who plan to attack a bank. When Donny reappears, Ella becomes the catalyst for a series of events, the final outcome of which is as shocking as it is unexpected. 408 pages. £12.99 NOW £3.50


70046 SECRET SCRIPTURE by Sebastian Barry


This novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker. Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, where she has spent the best part of her adult life, prepares to close. Leading up to the closure, she often talks with her psychiatrist Dr Grene. This relationship, guarded but trusting after so many years, intensifies and complicates as the doctor mourns the death of his wife. Told through their respective journals, the story emerges of Roseanne’s family in 1930s Fligo in Ireland. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, her story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland. It is a story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance yet still marked by love, loss, courage and hope. 300 large pages. £12.99 NOW £4


70033 JANICE GENTLE GETS SEXY by Mavis Cheek


Under pressure from her money-obsessed agent, Janice Gentle writes delicate, romantic novels with one goal in mind - to make enough money to find the man she loved and lost 20 years ago. But when Rohanne Bulbecker, a successful New York publisher, asks for Janice’s help with an extremely marketable idea, it is an opportunity for Janice to abandon her usual predictable genre and try to write something entirely new. 323pp in paperback.


£6.99 NOW £3 MORE ON NEXT PAGE www.bibliophilebooks.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36