Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss.

Outline is the first book in a short and yet epic cycle - a masterful trilogy which will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of our times.

'Outline succeeds powerfully. Among other things, it gets a great variety of human beings down on the page with both immediacy and depth; an elemental pleasure that makes the book as gripping to read as a thriller... A stellar accomplishment.' James Lasdun, Guardian

________________________ A JOYFUL 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF A COMING-OF-AGE CLASSIC ________________________ 'There are few modern tales of first love and its disillusions that are as thoroughly realised, as brilliantly lewd, and as hilariously satisfying to men and women of all ages as this one' - Rachel Cusk Eighteen-year-old Katherine - bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban - doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for. But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises... ________________________ 'The perfect book' - Meg Mason 'The best possible company in this difficult world' - Ann Patchett 'A daisy bomb of joy' - Maria Semple 'Funny, charming, teeming with life, and real' - Nick Hornby 'I adored it ... Redolent of classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine' - Sophie Dahl 'One of those books that when people have read it, they just push it into your hands silently: "You have to read this book, you will love this book." There's no other book I love more' - Caroline O'Donoghue, Sentimental Garbage 'Reading it again is as comforting as eating toast and Marmite between clean, fresh sheets' - Rachel Cooke, Sunday Times 'Think Brideshead Revisited set in the 1970s, only sexier and much funnier. It kills me that I didn't read it at university, when I really needed it' - Meg Rosoff, New Statesman

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 'A classic, but with contemporary urgency thumping through it.' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond A woman invites a famed artist to the remote coastal landscape where she lives. Drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision may penetrate the mystery at the centre of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence soon twists the patterns of her secluded household. 'The most singular book . . . A psychodrama that is both timeless and up-to-the minute . . . Truly one of a kind.' Justine Jordan, Guardian 'A novel of deep insight and scarring honesty.' Martin Chilton, Independent 'Re-sets the dial yet again.' Claire Harman, Evening Standard 'Extraordinary . . . fearless.' Alex Clark, The Spectator 'Glittering brilliance.' Jon Day, Financial Times

'A landmark in twenty-first-century English literature.' Andrew Anthony, Observer

'Kudos is one of the most astoundingly original and necessary books I've ever read. It made me laugh, think and cry . . . I envy anyone who hasn't read it yet.' Julie Myerson, Guardian

A woman on a plane listens to the stranger in the seat next to hers telling her the story of his life: his work, his marriage, and the harrowing night he has just spent burying the family dog. That woman is Faye, who is on her way to Europe to promote the book she has just published. Once she reaches her destination, the conversations she has with the people she meets - about art, about family, about politics, about love, about sorrow and joy, about justice and injustice - include the most far-reaching questions human beings ask. These conversations, the last of them on the phone with her son, rise dramatically and majestically to a beautiful conclusion.

Following the novels Outline and Transit, Kudos completes Rachel Cusk's trilogy with overwhelming power.

In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions- - personal, moral, artistic, and practical - as she endeavours to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life. Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility and the mystery of change. '[Transit] confirms that one of the most fascinating projects in contemporary fiction is unfolding in Rachel Cusk's trilogy.' Adam Foulds

A Life's Work is Rachel Cusk's funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. An education in babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which has provoked acclaim and outrage in equal measure.

In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk's marriage of ten years came to an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version of family life for her daughters.

When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusk's sharp and humane perspective.

When eighteen-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family home he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle. Years later, when he marries the strong-willed, beautiful Rebecca, he is secretly hoping to create his own version of that free-thinking family, but after the birth of their first child, their marriage begins to flounder. The chance to escape once more to his friend's country house comes as a welcome relief, until he discovers a family changed, and his own romantic notions of country life begin to disintegrate . . .

Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award Agnes Day - sub-editor, suburbanite, failure extraordinaire - has discovered disconcerting gaps in her general understanding of the world. Terminally middle-class and incurably romantic, Agnes finds herself chronically confused by the most basic interactions. Life and love go on without her, but with a little façade she can pass herself off as a success. Beneath the fiction, however, the burden of truth becomes harder to bear.

Sylish, shimmering and amoral, Sagan's tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera was her masterpiece, published when she was just eighteen. However, this frank and explicit novella was considered too daring for 1950s Britain, and sexual scenes were removed for the English publication. Now this fresh and accurate new translation presents the uncensored text in full for the first time. Bonjour Tristesse tells the story of Cecile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. In A Certain Smile, which is also included in this volume, Dominique, a young woman bored with her lover, begins an encounter with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways. Both novellas have been freshly translated by Heather Lloyd and include an introduction by Rachel Cusk. Heather Lloyd has also written a new afterword for this edition. Francoise Sagan was born in France in 1935. Bonjour tristesse (1954), published when she was just 19, became a succes de scandale and even earned its author a papal denunciation. Sagan went on to write many other novels, plays and screenplays, and died in 2004. Heather Lloyd was previously Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow, and has published work on both Bonjour tristesse and Francoise Sagan. Rachel Cusk is the author of Saving Agnes (1993), which won the Whitbread First Novel Award; A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001); and Arlington Park (2006), shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent book is Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012). 'Funny, thoroughly immoral and thoroughly French' The Times

A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Arlington Park is an ordinary English suburb. Over the course of a single day, the novel moves from one household to another, revealing its characters: Juliet, enraged at the victory of men over women in family life; Amanda, warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework; Solly, about to give birth to her fourth child; Maisie, struggling to accept provincial life; and Christine, the optimist and host of a dinner part where the neighbours come together.

Stella Benson sets off for Hilltop, a tiny Sussex village housing a family that is somewhat larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them, as au pair to their irascible son Martin - is undeniably low. What could possibly have driven her to leave her home, job and life in London for such rural ignominy? Why has she severed all contact with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to talk about her past?

The Country Life, Rachel Cusk's third novel, is a rich and subtle story about embarrassment, awkwardness and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises.

Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party. Her beauty ignites a blaze of excitement in his troubled heart. But Francine is ravenous for attention, driven by a thirst for conquest, and when Ralph tries politely to extricate himself, he finds he is bound by chains of consequence from which it seems there is no escape. The Temporary paints a merciless portrait of the cut and thrust of modern romance, work and life.