This is the first study of May 68 in fiction and in film. It looks at the ways the events themselves were represented in narrative, evaluates the impact these crucial times had on French cultural and intellectual history, and offers readings of texts which were shaped by it. The chosen texts concentrate upon important features of May and its aftermath: the student rebellion, the workers strikes, the question of the intellectuals, sexuality, feminism, the political thriller, history, and textuality. Attention is paid to the context of the social and cultural history of the Fifth Republic, to Gaullism, and to the cultural politics of gauchisme. The book aims to show the importance of the interplay of real and imaginary in the text(s) of May, and the emphasis placed upon the problematic of writing and interpretation. It argues that re-reading the texts of May forces a reconsideration of the existing accounts of postwar cultural history. The texts of May reflect on social order, on rationality, logic, and modes of representation, and are this highly relevant to contemporary debates on modernity.

The third volume of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield covers the eight months she spent in Italy and the South of France between the English summers of 1919 and 1920. It was a time of intense personal reassessment and distress. Mansfield's relationship with her husband John Middleton Murry was bitterly tested, and most of the letters in this present volume chart that rich and enduring partner'ship through its severest trial. This was a time, too, when Mansfield came to terms with the closing off of possibilities that her illness entailed. Without flamboyance or fuss, she felt it necessary to discard earlier loyalties and even friendships, as she sought for a spiritual standpoint that might turn her illness to less negative ends. As she put it, 'One must be ... continually giving & receiving, and shedding & renewing, & examining & trying to place'. For all the grimness of this period of her life, Mansfield's letters still offer the joie de vivre and wit, self-perception and lively frankness that make her correspondence such rewarding reading - an invaluable record of a `modern' woman and her time.

'A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse' - THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'A riveting portrait' - GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR *** 'Christie lovers should read this biography for the same reason they read her novels.' - The Times 'A model of how to combine biographical information, analysis and literary criticism into a propulsive narrative' - Daily Telegraph 'Worsley's book excels in bringing a broader historical perspective to Christie's life and work, and her enthusiasm is infectious.' - Observer Ms Worsley herself writes engagingly... She combines an almost militant support for her subject with a considered analysis of her books and plays.' - Economist 'Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was.' Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was 'just' an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't? As Lucy Worsley says, 'She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern'. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why - despite all the evidence to the contrary - did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldn't do. Lucy Worsley's biography is not just of an internationally renowned bestselling writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley's biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was - truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.

A Jumble of Stories by Katie Gray is a compilation of eight individual short stories for a variety of audiences. The stories include: Case of Self Defence A warning to husbands who are not appreciative of their wives. Do you know what she gets up to during the day? Merry Little Christmas Even the most intelligent and apparently contented of of young ladies might discover there is more to life than they realise! All on a cold and frosty morning We all have a talent of which we might be unaware. One young lady unexpectedly realises hers. Christmas at Frederico's Something of a cautionary tale. Do as you would be Done By, or Be Done By as you Did! A Christmas Story Retirement does not have to be the end, there could be a whole new career just around the corner. Sally's Story If you think you can........... you might surprise yourself and attain much more than you might have hoped. Fairy Godmother She was just playing a part - or was she? What do you think I am Not someone with whom to be trifled - EVER!!

Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was condemned as immoral and pessimistic. It tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d'Urbeville. In her search for respectability her fortunes fluctuate wildly, and the story assumes the proportions of a Greek tragedy. It explores Tess's relationships with two very different men, her struggle against the social mores of the rural Victorian world which she inhabits and the hypocrisy of the age. In addressing the double standards of the time, Hardy's masterly evocation of a world which we have lost, provides one of the most compelling stories in the canon of English literature, whose appeal today defies the judgement of Hardy's contemporary critics.

A Game of Four ....Ralph Connor arrives at work one morning to find his world turned upside down by a sinister, cloaked character known as the Watcher, who claims to have kidnapped his wife and seems to mysteriously know his every move and deepest, most innermost secrets..... .....Ralph unwittingly becomes the key player in a deadly battle of wits with a psychopathic rival, whose sole obsession is to destroy the very core of his world, by any means....

When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal friend and champion Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfil Kafka's last instruction: to burn his remaining manuscripts. Instead, Brod devoted the rest of his life to canonizing Kafka as the most prescient chronicler of the twentieth century. By betraying Kafka's last wish, Brod twice rescued his legacy - first from physical destruction, and then from obscurity. But that betrayal was also eventually to lead to an international legal battle over Kafka's legacy: as a writer in German, should his papers come to rest with those of the other great German writers, in the country where his three sisters died as victims of the Holocaust? Or, as Kafka was also a great Jewish writer, should they be considered part of the cultural inheritance of Israel, a state that did not exist at the time he died in 1924? Alongside an acutely observed portrait of Kafka and Brod and the influential group of writers and intellectuals known as the Prague Circle, Kafka's Last Trial also provides a gripping account of the recent series of Israeli court cases - cases that addressed dilemmas legal, ethical, and political - that determined the final fate of the manuscripts Brod had rescued when he fled from Prague to Palestine in 1939. It tells of a wrenching escape from Nazi invaders as the gates of Europe closed to Jews; of a love affair between exiles stranded in Tel Aviv; and of two countries whose national obsessions with overcoming the traumas of the past came to a head in the Israeli courts. Ultimately, Benjamin Balint invites us to question not only whether Kafka's legacy belongs by right to the country of his language, that of his birth, or that of his cultural and religious affinities - but also whether any nation state can lay claim to writers who belong more naturally to the international republic of letters.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDES TO EXAM SUCCESS from York Notes - the UK's favourite English Literature Study Guides. York Notes for AS & A2 are brand new and have been specifically designed for AS and A2 students to help you get the very best grade you can. They are comprehensive, easy to use, packed with valuable features and written by experienced examiners and teachers to give you an expert understanding of the text, critical approaches and the all-important exam. This edition covers Frankenstein and includes: An enhanced exam skills section which includes essay plans, expert guidance on understanding questions and sample answers. You'll know exactly what you need to do and say to get the best grades. A wealth of useful content like key quotations, revision tasks and vital study tips that'll help you revise, remember and recall all the most important information. The widest coverage and the best, most in-depth analysis of characters, themes, language, form, context and style to help you demonstrate an exhaustive understanding of all aspects of the text. York Notes for AS & A2 are also available for these popular titles: The Bloody Chamber(9781447913153) Doctor Faustus(9781447913177) The Great Gatsby(9781447913207) The Kite Runner(9781447913160) Macbeth(9781447913146) Othello(9781447913191) WutheringHeights(9781447913184)

Isandro has left his Spanish Andalucian village to search for his sister in Paris. There he meets members of the International Brigade and moves to Madrid to form a protest group against Franco's tyranny. The road ahead is long and hard and fraught with danger ... not least the rage that burns within him, ready to ignite in a political climate that demands a cool head...

The first ever memoirs from the Number One global bestselling adventure author.

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

Always candid, sometimes hilarious, and never less than thrillingly entertaining, On Leopard Rock is testament to a writer whose life is as rich and eventful as his novels are compellingly unputdownable.

Packed full of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you're studying, whether it's poetry, a play or a novel. You'll learn all about the historical context of the piece; find detailed discussions of key passages and characters; learn interesting facts about the text; and discover structures, patterns and themes that you may never have known existed. In the Advanced Notes, specific sections on critical thinking, and advice on how to read critically yourself, enable you to engage with the text in new and different ways. Full glossaries, self-test questions and suggested reading lists will help you fully prepare for your exam, while internet links and references to film, TV, theatre and the arts combine to fully immerse you in your chosen text. York Notes offer an exciting and accessible key to your text, enabling you to develop your ideas and transform your studies!

In this affectionate and unvarnished recollection of his past, Tony Hillerman looks at seventy-six years spent getting from hard-times farm boy to bestselling author. Using the gifts of a talented novelist and reporter, Hillerman draws brilliant portrait not just of his life, but of the world around him.

Ivan Turgenev, one of the greatest Russian writers, was the first to achieve real fame outside of his own country. He spent most of his adult life in Western Europe and started to write letters, not just to keep his friends informed of his progress, but 'in order to receive replies'. An entertaining and accomplished correspondent, he rarely objected to publication of his letters, which were written with that possibility in mind. This selection of full letters spans more than fifty years, from 1831 until just before Turgenev's death in September 1883. Turgenev enjoyed conversations by post, debating social and political questions, and issues in literature, art and music. Among his correspondents were major writers of the day (including Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, Henry James, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky) as well as friends and relations. Many of the letters reveal his views on contemporary literary and social events in Russia and Europe; others, to his publishers, translators and to aspiring authors, give some of his criteria for a writer. These letters will not provide an answer to the Turgenev enigma, but they do show many sides of this fascinating and mercurial man.The letters are in chronological sections. A biographical framework is provided both by the introductions to these sections and to individual letters, and by the inclusion of letters covering the main events of his life. This selection is an important contribution both to our knowledge and understanding of nineteenth-century Russian and European history and literature. A.V. Knowles is Senior Lecturer in Russian at the University of Liverpool and is the editor of the Tolstoy volume in The Critical Heritage series.

About Tryphena is a scholarly re-examination of the evidence about Thomas Hardy and his young cousin Tryphena Sparks. It establishes the exact date of the cousins' affair and clears away some of the deliberate obfuscations of Hardy's autobiography so that the importance of that affair in Hardy's start as both novelist and poet becomes clear for the first time.

An enhanced exam section: expert guidance on approaching exam questions, writing high-quality responses and using critical interpretations, plus practice tasks and annotated sample answer extracts. Key skills covered: focused tasks to develop your analysis and understanding, plus regular study tips, revision questions and progress checks to track your learning. The most in-depth analysis: detailed text summaries and extract analysis to in-depth discussion of characters, themes, language, contexts and criticism, all helping you to succeed.

'I cannot say enough about How to Read Now... Check it out' Roxane Gay 'A red-hot grenade... One of my favourite books of the year' Jia Tolentino 'Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny' Andrew Sean Greer 'I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed . . . Phenomenal' R.O. Kwon 'A wake-up call. A broadside. A rich and brilliant war cry' Chris Power How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words - beautiful, aspirational - are sometimes even true. But award-winning novelist Elaine Castillo has more ambitious hopes for our reading culture, and in this collection of linked essays, she moves to wrest reading away from the aspirations of uniting people in empathetic harmony and reposition it as thornier, ultimately more rewarding work. How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico. At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy - within ourselves, and with each other.

Novel Ideas explores meaning within novels with the aid of block diagrams. Written without jargon the book takes in a wide range of sometimes complex novels written over a period in excess of 200 years by British, Commonwealth, French, American, and Russian authors. These novels also take on important issues of their day that, in most cases, pursue points still relevant in today's world. Such as this can easily be seen by comparing the work of Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1790s with those that followed such as Kate Chopin and even Katherine Mansfield in the 1920s. The idea is to then reduce the content of the essays in question to a still more manageable level by containing the points raised therein on single page block diagrams. What this form of block diagram does is to give students a more easily retained visual representation of an essay that might comprise of over twelve thousand words relating to complex issues raised in the novels. It also allows students to compare and contrast similarities and differences across the novels chosen, a question frequently asked of students throughout most literature courses and under exam conditions. Other authors' works discussed are Eliot, Zola, Hardy, Flaubert, James, Conrad, De Laclose and Turgenev. If students were to operate this system for themselves it could also help by consolidating literary points brought up throughout the year. In other words this methodology can be used as a template and need not only apply to the novels dealt with here. Although primarily of use to students throughout a literary degree course the same system could be employed by students on A-level courses as an aid to disciplining their approach to this wide and often complex subject.

This study of Sherlock Holmes and panoptic power will intrigue both fans of the Holmes canon and anyone interested in the history of crime literature and how such a character has captured the imagination of countless generations. Dr Michael Plakotaris has succeeded in bringing together the most authoritative works on the matter to create a revealing insight into one of the most prominent figures of English literature. From comparisons between Holmes and his creator to studies of his Nietzschean personality, his panoptic-semiotic modus operandi and his successful relationship with Watson, we begin to understand the components used that created this astounding success in Victorian literature.

This volume offers students and book club members a handy and insight-filled guide to Morrison's works and their relation to current events and popular culture. One of the few authors to attain both commercial success and literary acclaim, Toni Morrison, a longstanding member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, is widely read by high school students and general readers. Her books have been adapted into highly extolled films such as Beloved, largely because, even when set in the past, they grapple with issues and emotions relevant to contemporary society. Designed for students and general readers, Reading Toni Morrison is a handy introduction to Morrison's works and their place in the world. The book begins with a look at Morrison's life and writing. Chapters overview the plots of her novels and discuss their themes, characters, and contexts. The book then examines Morrison's treatment of social issues and the presence of her works in popular culture. Chapters provide sidebars of interesting information along with questions to promote student research and book club discussion. Provides questions that can be used to generate book club discussion Includes sidebars to highlight interesting information about the author and her work Offers a selected, general bibliography of print and electronic resources to facilitate further study Film adaptations of the author's works, such as Beloved, are discussed and their impact explored

THE ULTIMATE GUIDES TO EXAM SUCCESS from York Notes - the UK's favourite English Literature Study Guides. York Notes for AS & A2 have been specifically designed to help AS and A2 students get the very best grade you can. They are comprehensive, easy to use, packed with valuable features and written by experienced examiners and teachers to give you an expert understanding of the text, critical approaches and the all-important exam. This edition covers The Kite Runner and includes: An enhanced exam skills section which includes essay plans, expert guidance on understanding questions and sample answers. You'll know exactly what you need to do and say to get the best grades. A wealth of useful content like key quotations, revision tasks and vital study tips that'll help you revise, remember and recall all the most important information. The widest coverage and the best, most in-depth analysis of characters, themes, language, form, context and style to help you demonstrate an exhaustive understanding of all aspects of the text. York Notes for AS & A2 are also available for these popular titles: The Bloody Chamber(9781447913153) Doctor Faustus(9781447913177) Frankenstein (9781447913214) The Great Gatsby(9781447913207) Macbeth(9781447913146) Othello(9781447913191) WutheringHeights(9781447913184)

When Bunny Carter, the old lady from the Manor House, is discovered in an open grave, Sophie Sayers is sure it's a case of foul play. But when it comes to suspects, she's spoiled for choice. One of Bunny's squabbling children from three different husbands? Petunia Lot from the Cats Prevention charity, always angling for a legacy? All these and more had motive and opportunity. But who is to blame? And can Sophie and her boyfriend, village bookseller Hector Munro, stop them before they strike again? Previously published by Debbie Young.

Love thy neighbour or fear thy neighbour? For myself and Lauren, my 10-year-old daughter No3 Beech Close was to be our refuge after two years of hell nursing my sick mother. In need of a fresh start and wanting to distance ourselves from the bad memories of my mother's house we moved to Beech Close, a small cul-de-sac of six houses situated around a picture-perfect green. It seemed perfect but I had underestimated the secrets that this tightknit community shared. Within hours of moving in my next-door neighbour Valerie made it abundantly clear we were not welcome. I soon discovered that Valerie hadn't welcomed the previous occupant either and she'd since disappeared without a trace. Had I put myself and my daughter in danger moving to Beech Close? Which neighbours, if any could I trust? And how far would they go to keep their secret? Perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty, Shari Lapena and Lisa Jewell