'Marvellous entertainment' Sunday Times Just married and newly arrived in Los Angeles are Paul and Katherine Cattleman. Paul responds immediately to the sunny, sprawling cosmopolitan city but to Katherine the main impression is of dirt and smog. Paul explores his surroundings and discovers Ceci, a girl who could be the incarnation of the city's uninhibited ways, while Katherine meets Iz a psychiatrist who recognises her unhappiness and sets out to help her. Under the bright west coast sun, the city begins to affect the couple in separate, subtle but significant ways, shining new light on their marriage with moving, funny and unexpected consequences.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children's folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.
Also in London is Vinnie's colleague Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to.
Both American, both abroad, and both achingly lonely, Vinnie and Fred play out their confused alienation and dizzying romantic liaisons in Alison Lurie's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Smartly written, poignant, and witty, "Foreign Affairs" remains an enduring comic masterpiece.
"A splendid comedy, very bright, brilliantly written in a confident and original manner. The best book by one of our finest writers."
-Elizabeth Hardwick
"There is no American writer I have read with more constant pleasure and sympathy. . . . "Foreign Affairs" earns the same shelf as Henry James and Edith Wharton."
-John Fowles
"If you manage to read only a few good novels a year, make this one of them."
-"USA Today"
"An ingenious, touching book."
-"Newsweek"
"A flawless jewel."
-"Philadelphia Inquirer"

In "Lolly Willowes," Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break way from her controlling family--a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.

Over the years, Alison Lurie has earned a devoted readership for her satiric wit and storytelling acumen. With "Truth and Consequences," described by the "New Yorker" as "a comedy of adultery with a comedy of academia thrown in," Lurie returns with a modern social satire that recalls the best of David Lodge and Mary McCarthy as well as her own popular university novels "The War Between the Tates" and "Foreign Affairs." BACKCOVER: "A wily, shapely tale of love's labors lost."
-"Elle"
"A wry, insightful, thoroughly enjoyable tale about how men and women choose their demons and their lovers, and the sacrifices they're willing to make for both."
-"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution"
"Delightful . . . Her characters are, as always, wonderfully imperfect."
-"The New York Review of Books"

'If you're coming to Lurie for the first time, you must begin with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Foreign Affairs' Guardian Vinnie Miner is an American professor of children's literature on her way to London for six months of research. Settling into her aeroplane seat she finds herself accosted by Chuck, a brash engineer wearing cowboy boots. She never imagines she'll see him again. But wet, windy London turns out to be the setting for fresh beginnings, and for Vinnie, a place to take up space, breathe the air, and to refuse to become a minor character in one's own life. Foreign Affairs is a comic, heart-wrenching masterpiece of unexpected romance. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY AMANDA CRAIG

Brian and Erica Tate appear to have every advantage in life: academic careers, two children, nice friends and money. But when Brian begins an affair with one of his students the disintegration of their lives is swift and shocking. Things spiral when a protest against a sexist professor at the university ramps up and Brian, hopelessly compromised by split loyalties, gets caught up in the action. Can the Tates marriage survive? Lurie skewers both sides in this brilliant campus satire of 1960s feminism, parenthood, infidelity and academic pomposity. 'Her humour is a delight and she writes with an almost unholy relish' Irish Times

Jenny has devoted her life to her husband, the famous naturalist Wilkie Walker. But this year, as winter comes on, Wilkie seems distant and depressed. In desperation Jenny persuades him to visit Key West, but the sun and tropical scenery do nothing to cheer him up. As he grows even stranger, Jenny becomes involved with some intriguing local characters including Gerry, an ex-beatnik poet, and Lee, the dramatically attractive manager of a women-only guest house. Wife, secretary, confidante, housekeeper - might Jenny at last break free from her role as Wilkie's support act? WITH A NEW PREFACE FROM ALISON LURIE 'Full of sparkish - indeed Muriel Sparkish - observations and gently subversive wit... Lurie beautifully handles the ecstatic liberation of lesbian love' Independent

Sleeping beauties? Not Clever Gretchen or Kate Crackernuts or Manka or any of the other young heroines in this wonderful collection of folktales. Active, witty, brave, and resourceful, these girls and young women can fight and hunt, defeat giants, answer riddles, outwit the Devil, and rescue friends and family from all sorts of dangers and evil spells. These stories and many others like them were gathered by scholars from all the countries of Europe, but are usually left out of the popular collections of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when women were supposed to be beautiful, innocent, and passive.

In "Don't Tell the Grown-Ups," one of our wittiest and most astute cultural commentators explores the world of children's literature -- from Lewis Carroll to Dr. Seuss, from classic fairy tales to A.A. Milne, from Beatrix Potter to J.R.R. Tolkien -- and shows that many of the most enduring books for children share a surprising quality: they challenge rather than uphold respectable adult values.

The author of "The War Between the Tates" and the Pulitzer prize-winning "Foreign Affairs" now brings her irresistible wit to the ghost story.
In nine spooky tales, Alison Lurie writes of women haunted by ghosts both literal and metaphorical: A woman about to marry Mr. Right is visited by the spirit of his first wife; a dead fiance haunts a foreign service officer every time she has an intimate moment with another man; the ghost of a girl in a Halloween costume disconcerts the perfect housewife. A secretary on a diet begins to see obese people everywhere she looks; a self-conscious poet is shadowed by her intrusive doppelganger; and a capricious, malevolent spirit seems to have inhabited an acquisitive matron's prized piece of furniture.
Delightfully strange and beautifully told, these nine tales show Alison Lurie at her luminous best.

'Delightful... Her characters are, as always, wonderfully imperfect' New York Review of Books Alan has changed because he's injured his back. Pain has altered his appearance and made him glum, demanding and resentful. His wife Jane has to do everything for him - fetching, carrying, shopping, cooking, even dressing and undressing him. Sometimes she longs for escape. Delia is a writer and researcher specialising in fairy tales - she is, in her own estimation, a 'Great Artist'. Her husband, Henry, manages her every need making certain Delia gets everything she desires including spectacular doses of adulation. Can Delia coax Alan out of his grumpiness? Can Henry stop Jane feeling guilty? Can the two couples break out of their fixed roles? 'I am re-reading with enormous delight and greed. If you're new to [Lurie], lucky you: marvellously astute comedies of social, moral and sexual manners, her witty exuberance is nothing short of inspirational' Helen Simpson

'A brilliant and seemingly effortless accomplishment...steady uninterrupted delight' Sunday Telegraph Faculty wife Emily Stockwell Turner is beautiful, rich, and principled. However, five years in a marriage devoid of passion is enough to propel Emmy, despite her principles, into an affair with a silver-tongued self-confessed libertine. Her husband, a dull, hard-working lecturer, suspecting everyone but the right man, sends himself half mad with jealousy. The shocking, unforeseen consequences of their affair shatter Emmy's most cherished delusions about friendship, romance, and the ties that bind. 'Lurie is and really is, different. She writes with great elegance, as frostily clear as the climate she describes; and with sharp intelligence piercing through every sentence. She is very funny as well' Observer

An artists' colony is a false paradise for a frustrated writer in this "witty, knowing, and perceptive" novel from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author (The New Yorker). The mansion is called Illyria, but for the writers and artists who flock there each summer, it's a Garden of Eden where every artistic curiosity is explored. Away from family, friends, and ordinary responsibilities, the creative spirit can flower, nurtured by the company of other artistic souls. Janet Belle Smith's husband doesn't understand why she can't write at home--or really, for that matter, why she must write at all--but for Janet, the reason is clear: Only in Illyria can she be herself. But as the writer mingles with her fellow artists--including a Marxist novelist, a Beat poet, and a wild-man sculptor--she begins to fear that the "real" her isn't who she expected, and Illyria is not the peaceful kingdom it appears to be. This creative paradise is rotting from the inside out, and if Janet doesn't move quickly, she'll be trapped in the rubble when the walls come tumbling down. From the National Book Award-shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs, this humorous story "goes down pleasantly, like a glass of lemonade" (The New York Times).

It often seems that the most gifted authors of books for children are not like other writers: instead, in some essential way, they are children themselves. E. Nesbit devoted weeks to building a toy town out of kitchenware. James Barrie spent his holidays playing pirates and Indians with the four Davies boys.

Laurent deBrunhoff, who continued his father's Babar series, is still climbing trees at the age of 70. Beatrix Potter preferred the company of animals and pets to that of eligible young dancing partners at balls. In these fascinating studies, Alison Lurie's subjects range from what fairy tales teach us, to children's games and poetry by and for children, from book illustrators to enchanted forests and secret gardens in children's literature.