America's foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity in The Origin Of Others.

In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Camara Laye are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison's fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated books: Beloved, Paradise, and A Mercy. Morrison also writes about nineteenth-century literary efforts to romance slavery, contrasting them with the scientific racism of Samuel Cartwright and the banal diaries of the plantation overseer and slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood. She looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin colour to reveal character or drive narrative.

Expanding the scope of her concern, she also addresses globalization and the mass movement of peoples in this century. National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Morrison's most personal work of nonfiction to date.

A beautiful hardback edition of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, from the great Toni Morrison. Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home - the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, 'Beloved'. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison's enduring masterpiece and best-known work. 'An American masterpiece' A. S. Byatt 'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times **One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Beautiful editions of great books to last a lifetime

Presidential Medal of Freedom, Nobel Prize, and Pulitzer Prize recipient Toni Morrison’s eight children’s books, cowritten with her son, are collected in one hardcover volume for the first time in this beautiful keepsake treasury with a foreword by Oprah Winfrey! The three Who’s Got Game books slyly and exuberantly retell some of Aesop’s fables. Three of the stories feature illustrations by Pascal Lemaitre: The Ant or the Grasshopper? examines friendship, betrayal, and survival while The Lion or the Mouse? takes a hilarious, subversive look at bullying and ego, big and small, and The Poppy or the Snake? shows how an accidental injury spirals into a battle of wills. In The Tortoise or the Hare?, illustrated by Joe Cepeda, slow and steady wins the race…or does it? Peeny Butter Fudge, also illustrated by Joe Cepeda, celebrates the relationship between three kids and their Nana. Nana can take an ordinary afternoon and make it extra special! Nap time, story time, and playtime are transformed by fairies, dragons, dancing, and pretending—and then mixing and fixing yummy, yummy fudge just like Nana and Mommy did not so many years ago. A lot can happen when Nana is left in charge! Little Cloud and Lady Wind features artwork by Sean Qualls and follows Little Cloud, who likes her own place in the sky. Away from the other clouds, the sky is all hers. Can Lady Wind show Little Cloud the power of being with others? Shadra Strickland’s charming illustrations illuminate Please, Louise. One gray afternoon, Louise makes a trip to the library. With the help of a new library card and through the transformative power of books, what started out as a dull day turns into one of surprises, ideas, and curiosity! This engaging picture book celebrates the wonders of reading, the enchanting capacity of the imagination, and, of course, the splendor of libraries. Toni Morrison’s first book for children, The Big Box, illustrated by Giselle Potter, introduces three feisty children who show grown-ups what it really means to be a kid.

The Bluest Eye chronicles the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in 1940s Ohio: Pauline, Cholly, Sam and Pecola. Pecola, unlovely and unloved, prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged blond white schoolfellows. She becomes the focus of the mingled love and hatred engendered by her family's frailty and the world's cruelty as the novel moves toward a savage but poignant resolution.

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES Spine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. A haunting and affecting meditation on love from the Nobel-prize winning author of Beloved. May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida - even L - all are women obsessed with Bill Cosey. He shapes their yearnings for a father, husband, lover, guardian, and friend. This audacious vision from a master storyteller on the nature of love - its appetite, its sublime possession, and its consuming dread - is rich in characters and dramatic events, and in its profound sensitivity to just how alive the past can be. Sensual, elegiac and unforgettable, Love ultimately comes full circle to that indelible, overwhelming first love that marks us forever. Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction 'Love is her best work...a slender but mesmerising tale' Evening Standard

'An American masterpiece' AS Byatt WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BOOKER PRIZE WINNER BERNARDINE EVARISTO Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home - the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, 'Beloved'. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison's enduring masterpiece and best-known work. Stunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison's best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work. 'The literary titian we must never stop learning from' Metro Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The worlds of Halle and Paul D. are to be destroyed in a cataclysm of torment and agony.

The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution.

Discover Toni Morrison's most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and important place in contemporary American literature. 'An American masterpiece' AS Byatt It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her love. Told with heart-stopping clarity, melding horror and beauty, Beloved is Toni Morrison's enduring masterpiece. 'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours..."Beloved," is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times 'The literary titan we must never stop learning from' Metro Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction **One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

"Effective Staff Training in Social Care" provides a theoretical framework for training and professional development, focusing on group learning in a social care context. It tackles the tensions and dilemmas of those engaged in training amidst a climate of change and a mixed economy of welfare and examines how these influence both the trainer and the learner.

Song of Solomon is a work of outstanding beauty and power, whose story covers the years from the 1930's to the 1960's in America. At its centre is Macon Dead Jr, the son of a wealthy black property owner, who has been brought up to revere the white world. Macon learns about the tyranny of white society from his friend Guitar, though he is more concerned to escape the tyranny of his father. So while Guitar joins a terrorist group of poor blacks, Macon goes home to the South, lured by tales of buried family treasure. His journey leads to the discovery of something more valuable than gold - his past. Yet the truth about his origins and his true self is not fully revealed to Macon until he and Guitar meet once again in powerful, and deadly confrontation.

As girls, Nel and Sula shared each other's discoveries and dreams in the poor black mid-West of their childhood. Then Sula ran away to live her dreams and Nel got married. Ten years later Sula returns and no one, least of all Nel, trusts her. Sula is the story of the fear that makes people accept self-pity; the fear that will not countenance escape and that justifies itself through myth and legend. Sula herself is cast as a witch and demon by the people who resent her strength. They attack her with the most pervasive weapon of all, the weapon of language and story. But Sula is a woman of power, a wayward force who challenges the smallness of a world that tries to hold her down.

Stunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison's best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, AUTHOR OF QUEENIE Pecola Breedlove longs for blond hair and blue eyes, so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the marigolds in her garden will not bloom, and her wish will not come true. Pecola's life is about to change in other painful and devastating ways. A powerful interrogation of what it means to conform to an idea of beauty, The Bluest Eye asks vital questions about race, class and gender and remains one of Toni Morrison's most unforgettable works.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved""is a towering achievement.

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel Garci a Ma rquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

"Effective Staff Training in Social Care" provides a theoretical framework for training and professional development, focusing on group learning in a social care context. It tackles the tensions and dilemmas of those engaged in training amidst a climate of change and a mixed economy of welfare and examines how these influence both the trainer and the learner.

Written by a multi-disciplinary group of leading practitioners, Sexual Offending Against Children provides an account of the practice, policy and management issues involved in the assessment and treatment of adult and adolescent sexual offenders against children. Written for practitioners from all disciplines concerned with this area of work, it is underpinned by a strong theoretical base, giving a practical and detailed description of the management of sexual offenders, as well as the potential impact on service providers.

“She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truth-teller. She was a magician with language, who understood the power of words.” - Oprah Winfrey

A vital non-fiction collection from one of the most celebrated and revered American writers

Spanning four decades, these essays, speeches and meditations interrogate the world around us. They are concerned with race, gender and globalisation. The sweep of American history and the current state of politics. The duty of the press and the role of the artist. Throughout Mouth Full of Blood our search for truth, moral integrity and expertise is met by Toni Morrison with controlled anger, elegance and literary excellence.

The collection is structured in three parts and these are heart-stoppingly introduced by a prayer for the dead of 9/11, a meditation on Martin Luther King and a eulogy for James Baldwin. Morrison’s Nobel lecture, on the power of language, is accompanied by lectures to Amnesty International and the Newspaper Association of America.

She speaks to graduating students and visitors to both the Louvre and America’s Black Holocaust Museum. She revisitsThe Bluest Eye, Sula and Beloved; reassessing the novels that have become touchstones for generations of readers.

Mouth Full of Blood is a powerful, erudite and essential gathering of ideas that speaks to us all. It celebrates Morrison’s extraordinary contribution to the literary world.

A stirring exploration of war, race and belonging from the Nobel-prize winning author of Beloved. An angry and self-loathing veteran of the Korean War, Frank Money finds himself back in racist America after enduring trauma on the front lines that left him with more than just physical scars. As Frank revisits the memories from childhood and the war that leave him questioning his shattered sense of self, he unearths the courage he thought he'd lost forever. It is with incantatory power that Morrison's language reveals an apparently defeated man finding his manhood - and, finally, his home. 'No other writer in my lifetime, or perhaps ever, has married so completely an understanding of the structures of power with knowledge of the human heart' Kamila Shamsie, Guardian Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction