Tinged with melancholy but rooted in resiliency, the exquisite stories of Bernard MacLaverty’s Blank Pages display the perseverance of the human spirit. In “A Love Picture,� a middle-aged woman, already no stranger to loss, consults a World War II newsreel to determine the fate of her son. “Blackthorns� tells of a poor, out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely savior. The harrowing but transcendent “The End of Days� imagines life in another pandemic as artist Egon Schiele and his wife, both stricken with the Spanish flu, spend their final days together. And in the poignant title story, an elderly writer takes stock of what remains after losing his life partner. Blank Pages elegantly probes MacLaverty’s signature themes—domestic love, Catholicism, the Troubles, aging—with compassion and insight. A consummately gifted storyteller, MacLaverty uncovers the turbulent undertones of seemingly ordinary human interactions and explores endings of all kinds with tenderness, affection, and wry humor. Acclaimed for his extraordinary emotional range and “telescopic observational powers� (Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal), MacLaverty captures the joys and sorrows of everyday existence in crystalline, precise prose. Each resonant story in Blank Pages reminds us again why he is regarded as one of the greatest living Irish writers.

With Midwinter Break, a moving portrait of retired couple Gerry and Stella Gilmore's marriage in crisis, Bernard MacLaverty reminds us why he is regarded as one of the greatest living Irish writers. Through accurate, compassionate observation and effortlessly elegant writing, MacLaverty reveals the long-unspoken insecurities that exist between Gerry and Stella over their four-day holiday in Amsterdam, crafting a profound examination of human love.

Set in the Northern Ireland of the 1980s, Cal tells the story of a young Catholic man living in a Protestant area. For Cal, some choices are devastatingly simple: he can work in an abattoir that nauseates him or join the dole queue; he can brood on his past or plan a future with Marcella. Springing out of the fear and violence of Ulster, Cal is a haunting love story that unfolds in a land where tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark. See also: Lies of Silence by Brian Moore

A Guardian / Sunday Times / Irish Times / Herald Scotland / Mail on Sunday Book of the Year Winner of the Bord Gais Novel of the Year 'Midwinter Break is a work of extraordinary emotional precision and sympathy, about coming to terms - to an honest reckoning - with love and the loss of love, with memory and pain...this is a novel of great ambition by an artist at the height of his powers' Colm Toibin A retired couple, Gerry and Stella Gilmore, fly to Amsterdam for a midwinter break. A holiday to refresh the senses, to see the sights and to generally take stock of what remains of their lives. But amongst the wintry streets and icy canals we see their relationship fracturing beneath the surface. And when memories re-emerge of a troubled time in their native Ireland things begin to fall apart. As their midwinter break comes to an end, we understand how far apart they are - and can only watch as they struggle to save themselves.

Penguin Student Editions are complete unabridged texts of Penguin Classics, Modern Classics and some more recent titles, packaged with reading help for the student in the form of:

- accessible yet authoritative introductions
- glossary of cultural references and unfamiliar words
- stimulating activities and discussion points, including activities needed to prepare for essays and examinations
- chapter-by-chapter summaries
- plot and character outlines
- chronology of the historical events of the time
- overview of the ways famous critics have read the books

A student-friendly approach to literature - the way students want to read.

A haunting love story set against the fear and violence of Ulster, where tenderness and innocence must struggle to survive.

The luminous novel by one of the finest living Irish writers, which Brian Moore has praised as "in every sense a triumph . . . moving throughout and ending triumphantly and joyously in its own special music."

The award-winning Grace Notes is a compact and altogether masterful portrait of a woman composer and the complex interplay between her life and her art. With superb artistry and startling intimacy, it brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna — estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and musician making her mark in a male-dominated field. It is a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One's Own would instantly understand.

"MacLaverty summons up a time and a place with an unerring exactness reminiscent of Joyce's Dubliners . . . a magnificent portrait of the sources and ends, wretchedness and rewards, of creativity."—Sunday Times [London]

"Page after page something delighted and moved me-marvelous, vivid tours of emotion, intelligence, poetry-every step of the way. Compelling."—Dennis McFarland, author of The Music Room

"I was reminded of the way Joyce Cary so brilliantly portrayed a painter's life in The Horse's Mouth. . . . What a wonderful writer [MacLaverty] is!"—Andrea Barrett

"More ambitious than any of his previous work . . . a remarkable novel."—Anna Mundow, Boston Globe

• Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize
• Winner of the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award

The extraordinary new story collection from one of Ireland's greatest writers and bestselling author of Mindwinter Break. Bernard MacLaverty is a consummately gifted short-story writer and novelist whose work - like that of John McGahern, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien or Colm Toibin - is deceptively simple on the surface, but carries a turbulent undertow. Everywhere, the dark currents of violence, persecution and regret pull at his subject matter: family love, the making of art, Catholicism, the Troubles and, latterly, ageing. Blank Pages is a collection of twelve extraordinary new stories that show the emotional range of a master. 'Blackthorns', for instance, tells of a poor out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely saviour. The most recently written story here is the harrowing but transcendent 'The End of Days', which imagines the last moments in the life of painter Egon Schiele, watching his wife dying of Spanish flu - the world's worst pandemic, until now. Much of what MacLaverty writes is an amalgam of sadness and joy, of circumlocution and directness. He never wastes words but neither does he ever forget to make them sing. Each story he writes creates a universe.

For the first time all of Bernard MacLaverty's unforgettable short stories are gathered together, with a new introduction by the author

Melding his native Irish sensibilities to those of his adopted west-coast Scotland, these tales attend to life's big events: love and loss, separation and violence, death and betrayal. But the stories teem with smaller significant moments too--private epiphanies, chilling exchanges, intimate encounters. Each of these extraordinary stories--with their wry, self-deprecating humor, their elegance, and subtle wisdom--gets to the very heart of life. Since the publication of "Secrets and Other Stories" in 1977, Bernard MacLaverty has been celebrated as one of the finest living short-story writers. Writing in the "New York Times," William Boyd summoned the shades of Yeats, Joyce, and Flann O'Brien, insisting that "MacLaverty sits perfectly comfortably" in their company.

A new book from Bernard MacLaverty is a cause for celebration, but Matters of Life and Death is more than that. It is the finest collection yet from a contemporary master of the form. Beginning with the sudden terror of a family caught up in shocking sectarian violence, and ending with the whiteout of an Iowa blizzard and the fear of losing your way very far from home, this collection is about bonds made and broken, secret and known. In the extraordinary story "Up the Coast," a landscape painter discovers a place that makes her, finally, feel whole, only to have that communion shattered by an arbitrary act of aggression that will resonate throughout her life. Written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are hauntingly real. MacLaverty's perfect attention to every detail, every nuance of idiom and character, remakes the world for us here on the page.

A coming-of-age story of a northern Irish boy getting out from under the thumb of mother, church, and country.

Set in Belfast in the late sixties, Bernard MacLaverty's new novel takes us into Martin Brennan's last semester of high school, when he finds old friendships tested and is forced to face the unknown. Before he can become an adult, Martin must unravel the sacred and contradictory mysteries of religion, science, and sex; he must learn the value of friendship; but most of all he must pass his exams—at any cost. Celebrating the desire to speak and the need to say nothing, The Anatomy School moves from the enforced silence of Martin's Catholic school retreat, through the hilarious tea-and-biscuits repartee of his eccentric elders, to the awkward wit and loose profanity of his two friends—the charismatic Kavanagh and the subversive Blaise Foley.

With characteristic "wise humor" (Publishers Weekly), MacLaverty "moves beyond the cloistered realm of school to capture the rhythms and pressures of provincial life, as well as [Martin's] desire to overcome them." (Denver Post). This absorbing, often funny novel "turns high anxieties and pain into well wrought fiction. MacLaverty has a wider vision, greater depth and technical craft than J. D. Salinger, a more subtle style than William Golding and a moral imagination to match that of James Joyce" ([Toronto] Globe and Mail). Reading group guide included.

"This quirky, appealing, new coming-of-age novel...celebrates the small, mighty joys of being alive."—Boston Herald

"[T]he reader is captivated by its various evocations of voice and scene. Action in this story yields, happily, to rhyme and rhythm of memory. . . . MacLaverty suggests that the big questions, such as how to find one's place in the world, are answered not through serious or conventional means but in unexpected, quietly subversive moments. . . . Bernard MacLaverty's beautifully written portrayal of how a mind changes as it acquires new knowledge is masterful."—The Times Literary Supplement

"Exceptionally skilled at entering into the lives of the lonely or impaired, [MacLaverty] depicts unfulfilment with an authenticity unmatched in Irish fiction since James Joyce's Dubliners."—The Sunday [London] Times

"[T]he author's trademark qualities—a clean, elegant style, combined with compassion, wit and moments of great insight—are inscribed on every page."—Literary Review [London]

"MacLaverty is a master of many moods and this genial, intelligent novel finds him at his relaxed best."—The Sunday [London] Telegraph

"[A] high-spirited, strongly imagined work, full of a doughty integrity and robust eloquence . . . [a] celebration of friendship, an exhilarating reconstruction of male adolescence."—The Independent [London]

Bernard Mac Laverty's beautifully turned storeis are full of humour, terse realism and moments of touching or shocking surprise. Nelson plays truant and sees something he wishes he hadn't in the title story, 'A Time to Dance'. In Phonefun Limited Sadie and Agnes, retired prostitutes hit upon an inventive new way of making someone happy with a phone call, while in My Dear Palestrina' a remarkable music teacher initiates her pupil into the mysteries of art and maturity.

Now back in print—the masterful and moving first novel by the acclaimed author of Cal.

When Brother Sebastian, née Michael Lamb, runs away from a bleak reformatory, taking with him twelve-year-old Owen Kane, the media and the police call it a kidnapping. For Lamb, though, it is a rescue of a formerly abused boy from a place of no hope, a last grasp at an elusive happiness. But as the outside world closes in, as time and money run out, Lamb finds himself moving towards a solution that is as shocking as it is loving.

"The alert and feeling realism of MacLaverty's story . . . has a rare purity of intention and texture. . . . A deeply moving first novel."—The Guardian

"A performance of great assurance and tenderness."—The Spectator

For Cal,some of the choices are devastatingly simple... He can work in an abattoir that nauseates him or join the dole queue;he can brood on his past or plan a future with Marcella. Springing out of the fear and violence of Ulster,CAL is a haunting love stroy in a land were tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark.

On a promontory jutting out into the Atlantic wind stands the Home run by Brother Benedict, where boys are taught a little of God and a lot of fear. To Michael Lamb, one of the youngest brothers, the regime is without hope, and when he inherits a small legacy he defies his elders and runs away, taking with him a twelve-year-old boy, Owen Kane. Radio Eireann call it a kidnapping. For Michael the act is thebeginning of Owen's salvation. Posing as father and son, they concentrate on discovering the happiness that is so unfamiliar to themboth. But as the outside world closes in around them - as time, moneyand opportunity run out - Michael finds himself moving towards a solution that is as uncompromising as it is inspired by love.

Returning to Belfast after a long absense,to attend her father`s funeral.Catherine McKenna-a young composer-remembers exactly why she left: the claustrophobic intimacies of the Catholic enclave,her fastidious,nagging mother,and the pervading tensions of a city at war with itself. She remembers a more innocent time,when the LoyalistsLambeg drums sounded mysterious and exciting; she remembers her shattered relationship with the drunken,violent Dave,she remembers thechild she had with him,waiting back in Glasgow. This is a novel, about coming to terms with the past and the healing power of music, GRACE NOTES is a master story-teller`s triumphant return to the long form: a powerful lyrical novel of great distinction.

Any book of stories from Bernard MacLaverty is a cause for celebration, but Matters of Life and Death is more than that, as it is - without question - one of the finest contemporary examples of the short story as a genre. Beginning with the sudden, nauseating terror of a family caught up in an explosion of shocking sectarian violence and ending with the white-out of an Iowa blizzard and a different kind of fear, Matters of Life and Death is a book about bonds and connections, made and broken, secret and known. Vivid, beautifully controlled and written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are object lessons in the art of short fiction.