Examines the lives of the Cambridge spies, and in particular Anthony Blunt. The story is told by Blunt, in the form of a journal which starts on the "first day of the new life". The author uses the "secret life" as a way to explore the darker realms of the 20th century and its hidden minds.

THE LOCK-UP - A THRILLING NEW STRAFFORD AND QUIRKE MYSTERY - IS AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER 'Outstanding.' Irish Independent 'Exquisite.' Daily Mail 'Hypnotic.' Financial Times 'This is crime fiction for the connoisseur.' The Times 'The body is in the library,' Colonel Osborne said. 'Come this way.' Detective Inspector St John Strafford is called in from Dublin to investigate a murder at Ballyglass House - the Co. Wexford family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. Facing obstruction from all angles, Strafford carries on determinedly in his pursuit of the murderer. However, as the snow continues to fall over this ever-expanding mystery, the people of Ballyglass are equally determined to keep their secrets. 'A typically elegant country house mystery.' Guardian 'A well-crafted story, peopled by superbly well-drawn characters, and put together in the finest prose . . . Masterly.' Irish Independent

"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster." Thus begins Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark; this, the author tells us, is the whole story except that he starts from here, with his characteristic dazzling skill and irony, and brilliantly turns a fable into a chilling, original novel of folly and destruction. Amidst a Weimar-era milieu of silent film stars, artists, and aspirants, Nabokov creates a merciless masterpiece as Albinus, an aging critic, falls prey to his own desires, to his teenage mistress, and to Axel Rex, the scheming rival for her affections who finds his greatest joy in the downfall of others. Published first in Russian as Kamera Obskura in 1932, this book appeared in Nabokov's own English translation six years later. This New Directions edition, based on the text as Nabokov revised it in 1960, features a new introduction by Booker Prize-winner John Banville.

With an introduction by John Banville Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1996. To like something is to want to ingest it and, in that sense, is to submit to the world; to like something is to succumb, in a small but contentful way, to death. Tarquin Winot - hedonist, food obsessive, ironist and snob - travels a circuitous route from the Hotel Splendide in Portsmouth to his cottage in Provence. Along the way he tells the story of his childhood and beyond through a series of delectable menus, organized by season. But this is no ordinary cookbook, and as we are drawn into Tarquin's world, a far more sinister mission slowly reveals itself . . . Winner of the 1996 Whitbread First Novel Award, John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food; an erotic and sensual culinary journey. Its elegant, intelligent and unhinged narrator is nothing less than a work of art himself.

'This novel is essence of Banville ... a career summation' Daily Telegraph Felix Mordaunt, recently released from prison, steps from a flashy red sports car onto the estate of his youth. But there is a new family living in the drafty old house: descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley. Felix must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, with their harried housekeeper who becomes his landlady, with the recently commissioned biographer of Godley Sr., and with a wealthy and beautiful woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request...

'Yeats was one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them.' - T.S. Eliot

'You were silly like us; your gift survived it all;The parish of rich women, physical decay, yourself;Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.' - W.H Auden, In Memory of W.B. Yeats

A monograph of duotone photographs, taken in the Palm House at the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin, beautifully illustrate this building as it was prior to its restoration. The photographs capture the cluttered green jungle, worn by time and held high in affection by the enchanted visitors who stepped inside its lofty paradise. By bringing the reader around the house as it was, drawing the eye to detail upwards, along its unique metal walkway and into the smaller treasure, the orchid house; to look at the intricate glass panels, metal structure, the wooden frames with their own unique patina of the passage of time, The Palm House tells its story visually. Meanwhile, in an accompanying text, Brendan Sayers relates how a visitor felt on entering and exploring this exotic world, the history and the origin of the planting, the unique pot and tub culture, and the importance of the collection.

**AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW** 'The ultimate page-turner.' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Like drinking Bollinger when your usual tipple is Babycham.' THE TIMES The Sunday Times bestselling author of Snow and April in Spain returns with Strafford and Quirke's most troubling case yet. 1950s Dublin. in a lock-up garage in the city, the body of a young woman is discovered - an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play. The victim's sister, a newspaper reporter from London, returns to Dublin to join the two men in their quest to uncover the truth. But, as they explore her links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery. With relations between the two men increasingly strained, and their investigation taking them back to the final days of the Second World War, can they join the pieces of a hidden puzzle? Readers are loving The Lock-Up: ***** 'A real page-turner. . . Highly recommend!' ***** 'Crime writing at its finest' ***** 'Quite spectacular! John Banville is a wonderful writer' ***** 'I had an absolute blast reading this novel. I genuinely didn't want it to end.' **APRIL IN SPAIN AVAILABLE NOW**

THE LOCK-UP - A THRILLING NEW STRAFFORD AND QUIRKE MYSTERY - IS AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER The sumptuous, propulsive, sun-kissed follow up to the bestselling Snow, from the Booker Prize winning author 'He wanted to know who she was, and why he was convinced he had some unremembered connection with her. It was as simple as that. But he knew it wasn't. It wasn't simple at all.' When Dublin pathologist Quirke glimpses a familiar face while on holiday with his wife, it's hard, at first, to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him. Could she really be who he thinks she is, and have a connection with a crime that nearly brought ruin to an Irish political dynasty? Unable to ignore his instincts, Quirke makes a call back home and Detective St John Strafford is soon dispatched to Spain. But he's not the only one on route: as a terrifying hitman hunts down his prey, they are all set for a brutal showdown. Praise for Snow: 'Superb ... crime fiction for the connoisseur.' The Times 'Outstanding.' Irish Independent 'Exquisite.' Daily Mail 'Hypnotic.' Financial Times 'Compelling.' Sunday Times 'Superb to the last drop.' Independent

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."--Immanuel Kant

Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century--an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political plurality. In "The Crooked Timber of Humanity" he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant--and sometimes genocidal--nationalism that convulses the modern world.

This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, a new foreword in which award-winning novelist John Banville discusses Berlin's life and ideas, particularly his defense of pluralism, and a substantial new appendix that provides rich context, including letters by Berlin and previously uncollected writings, most notably his virtuoso review of Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy."

Alexander Cleave has left his acting career and family behind and banished himself to his childhood home. He wants to retire from life, but presences, ghostly and human, all conspire to distract him from his retirement.

In this brilliantly haunting new novel, John Banville forges an unforgettable amalgam of enchantment and menace that suggests both The Tempest and his own acclaimed The Book of Evidence. "A surreal and exquisitely lyrical new novel by one of the great stylists writing in English today."--Boston Globe.

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976 this historical novel is based on the life of Nicholas Koppernigk, better known as Copernicus, whose ideas and writings shattered the medieval view of the universe. "Kepler", also by John Banville, won "The Guardian" Fiction Prize in 1981.

'Yeats was one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them.' - T.S. Eliot

'You were silly like us; your gift survived it all;The parish of rich women, physical decay, yourself;Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.' - W.H Auden, In Memory of W.B. Yeats

In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel -- among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW 'Banville writes dangerous and clear-running prose and has a grim gift of seeing people's souls.' DON DELILLO 'Crime writing of the finest quality, elegant, distinctive and utterly absorbing.' Daily Mail 'John Banville is one of the best novelists in English.' Guardian '[The Strafford and Quirke series] promises to elevate the crime novel to new artistic heights.' Financial Times The Sunday Times bestselling author of Snow and April in Spain returns with Strafford and Quirke's most troubling case yet. 1950s Dublin, in a lock-up garage in the city, the body of a young woman is discovered, an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play. The victim's sister, a newspaper reporter from London, returns to Dublin to join the two men in their quest to uncover the truth. But, as they explore her links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery. With relations between the two men increasingly strained, and their investigation taking them back to the final days of the Second World War, can they join the pieces of a hidden puzzle?

John Banville’s stunning powers of mimicry are brilliantly on display in this engrossing novel, the darkly compelling confession of an improbable murderer.

Freddie Montgomery is a highly cultured man, a husband and father living the life of a dissolute exile on a Mediterranean island. When a debt comes due and his wife and child are held as collateral, he returns to Ireland to secure funds. That pursuit leads to murder. And here is his attempt to present evidence, not of his innocence, but of his life, of the events that lead to the murder he committed because he could. Like a hero out of Nabokov or Camus, Montgomery is a chillingly articulate, self-aware, and amoral being, whose humanity is painfully on display.

A MASTERFUL TALE OF BETRAYAL AND CORRUPTION BY THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE SEA 'Banville is one of the writers I admire the most' Hanya Yanahigara, author of A Little Life 'A brilliant feat of literary ventriloquism' The Times Having fled Rome and a stultifying marriage, Isabel Osmond is in London, brooding on the recent disclosure of her husband's shocking, years-long betrayal of her. What should she do now, and which way should she turn, in the emotional labyrinth where she has been trapped for so long? Reawakened by grief and the knowledge of having been grievously wronged, she determines to resume her youthful quest for freedom and independence. Soon Isabel must return to Italy and confront her husband, and seek to break his powerful hold on her. But will she succeed in outwitting him, and securing her revenge? Mrs Osmond is a masterly novel of betrayal, corruption and moral ambiguity, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea. 'A worthy sequel ... His book is not only an impressive recreation of James's atmospheres and pacing, but also full of minor cliff-hangers and page-turning suspenses that keep you guessing' Observer 'John Banville is one of the best novelists in English, and an expert ventriloquist, among other things ... Mrs Osmond is both a remarkable novel in its own right and a superb pastiche' Guardian 'John Banville is simply the finest writer at work today, a prolific prose stylist whose work has only deepened in quality throughout his career' John Boyne

Johannes Kepler, born in 1571 in south Germany, was one of the world's greatest mathematicians and astronomers. The author of this book uses this history as a background to his novel, writing a work of historical fiction that is rooted in poverty, squalor and the tyrannical power of emperors.

The second volume in the Freddie Montgomery trilogy. An unnamed murderer has served his time in prison, then comes to live on a sparsely populated island with the enigmatic Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic companion, Licht. A party of castaways then arrives, with uneasy results.

The material collected here is a treasure trove, a fine retrospective and a comprehensive guide to the work of Ireland’s greatest living novelist, John Banville. Selections are drawn from all of his novels, up to and including 2012’s Ancient Light; each piece standing alone, short-story-like, but also resonating with those around it and representing the novel from which it comes. There are radio plays, some published in print for the first time here. There is a judicious selection of his essays and reviews. Perhaps most beguiling of all are the pieces of memoir, the early work (including Banville’s first-ever piece of published fiction, from 1966) and the chance to see facsimiles of the handwritten first draft of the opening section of The Infinities. Possessed of a Past is an extraordinary document of the writer’s life and work across nearly fifty years of practice, simultaneously offering the perfect introduction to Banville’s sublime art and manna to devoted readers.