The Silver River

Biographies & Memoirs

DAISY GOODWIN

Arts & Literature

Fourth Estate Ltd.

A high-security luxury housing estate in the Thames Valley sees a disturbing outbreak of violence in this compelling novella, newly reissued with an introduction from Adam Phillips. Pangbourne Village is exclusive, expensive and protected from the outside world by the very latest in security systems. A seeming idyll of family life; the perfect place to bring up a child. So why, in the space of ten minutes early one morning, were the thirty-two adult residents brutally murdered, and all thirteen children abducted? After months of fruitless investigation - and no word of the children or a ransom - the police are mystified. It is only when psychiatrist Richard Greville is called in that the truth behind the massacre gradually becomes clear. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ali Smith, Iain Sinclair, Martin Amis and Ned Beauman) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

Running Wild

BALLARD,J.G.

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

<p>Set in Germany at the end of the 18th century, this book tells the story of the brilliant young Fritz von Hardenberg, later to become the great romantic philosopher &amp; poet. He announces his engagement to a 12 year old girl, to his family's consternation.</p>

The Blue Flower

Literature & Fiction

Fitzgerald, Penelope

Literary

<p>Problem: Best friends keep giving extremely generous giftsSolution: Give better ones in returnPhilip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house in south London, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin daughters: Can we have a pony - please? I want to go to boarding school - please? At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweep and FreeCell, Philip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing instruction manuals for Korean bread-making machines. And, at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously (he has been variously mistaken as a doctor/waiter and sinologist) Philip tells the world he is a scriptwriter, even though all he has managed to pen is a story he calls Wang the Unlucky Scholar.But, above all, Philip is worrying about his best friends Sean and Barry. The problem is simple: they give great presents. Their gifts are exquisite: a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice. They give them indiscriminately: on birthdays, at parties and quite often for no reason whatsoever. And, most distressingly, these presents break all bounds of generosity: two FA Cup Final tickets beside the royal box, a skiing holiday for Philip's entire family. These are gifts that hurt a man's pride, these are gifts that can never be matched.</p>

The Gift

David L. Flusfeder

Contemporary

Pulitzer-prize winning author Jonathan Weiner's revealing story of the science that is about to change all life forever. Biology used to be a science of the way things are. Now it is a science of the way things work, like physics or engineering. Biology's progress fascinates and appals us because it has gone from learning the ways of nature to trying to turn her. In his extraordinary new book, Jonathan Weiner reveals the life-changing discoveries that have been converging over the past half a century to bring us to a moment when biology has the power to change life as we know it. When Stephen Heywood, a carpenter, discovered he had A.L.S., a gradual, mysterious deterioration of the nervous system, Jamie Heywood, gave up his lucrative job to try and save his brother's life. He worked with cutting-edge scientists in a race to find a cure. Through this remarkable journey with a family in crisis, we are given an overview of the various gene therapies that are still on the horizon, capable of potentially bringing back those suffering from neurological diseases such as ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other various disorders of the brain. Through Jonathan Weiner's translucent prose, we experience not only the passion and torment of the Heywoods, but the fascinating and bewildering frontiers of biology. We learn a vast amount about the groundbreaking technologies that may one day save our own lives and will almost certainly change the way we live them.

His Brother's Keeper

Science & Math

Jonathan Weiner

Biological Sciences

From the author of THE FOWLER FAMILY BUSINESS comes a reissue of his infamous, intensely distilled epic, POMPEY.  This novel recounts scores of stories: of HoTLoVe, OMO, AO-1; of a pygmy hunt, an assassination, a crucifixion; of a human blood bank and a man with metal in his head and a dentist with nasty habits; of sick sex, ill winds, malignant diseases; of the Voys, the Halals, the Puppymen.  Most of all it tells the story of a flaky pyrotechnicist, Guy Vallender, and of his four progeny, chief among them Poor Eddie, who was quarry, whose gifts were otherwordly, whose gruesome fate was perhaps transcendent.  The action stretches seamlessly between the mid 40s and the mid 70s; its many topographies include Brussels, Salisbury, the Teutoburgerwald, the Congo, the industrial wastes of Lorraine. But the dominant setting is the titular city -- a nightmarish brick grid set on mud a populated by garish freaks. It is here that the characters move to their unique and inexorable ends, fuelled by the bad faith of the former comedian Ray Butt's Church Of The Best Ever Redemption and by the bad blood of the gerontophiliac Jean-Marie. POMPEY is a witty, gripping, emotionally harrowing work by our most viciously inventive writer -- part hallucinatory adventure, part unhappy family saga, part perverse tragedy of the fundamentalist delusion, it is persistently, hurtfully entertaining. And it includes footnotes. Heed the author's warning: 'After using this book please wash your hands.' That way you'll cleanse the stain of corruption, the reek of life as it's really lived (in Meades's fervid imagination).

Pompey

MEADES, JONATHAN

From the author of "The Binding Chair", this follow-up to memoir "The Kiss" explores the bonds of motherhood between four generations. When Kathryn Harrison was a little girl, her young mother left her in the care of her British grandmother who was raised in Shanghai. To Kathryn, her mother's mother seemed an almost unimaginably powerful figure: an imperious arbiter of good taste and a master storyteller, who, when coaxed, might reveal stories of a magic and vanished world. She jilted an array of suitable men before concluding that she was not quite modern enough to have a baby without a husband. At the age of 43 she finally married, and the fruit of this union, Harrison's mother, was no more interested than she in being bound by convention. An occasional witness to her daughter's growth to adulthood, she would appear sporadically in film-star clothes and urge unwanted glamour on her shy child. Harrison grew up a spectator of the remarkable, striving to comprehend these women and yet find her own way to live. In this touching memoir, Harrison writes of the ties that bind mothers to their children - and the forces that can drive them apart. She ponders the legacy of storytelling she inherited from her grandmother, and peers into the deep well of family history from which she draws inspiration for her novels. Reconsidering her past as she watches her own children grow, she recalls the thrilling risk of shoplifting; the longing for perfection that resulted in a fierce eating disorder; and the thunderous fights that showed how impossible and how necessary it was to leave home. "Seeking Rapture" conveys the aching tenderness Harrison feels toward her children, and her awe of their imaginary worlds that no adult can enter. The evocative book will awaken readers to sift through their own sense of motherhood, loss and regeneration as it chronicles the unforgettable episodes that form the drama of domestic life.

Seeking Rapture : A Memoir

HARRISON, KATHRYN

Jonathan Franzen is smart and brash, the kind of person you want as your social critic but not as a brother-in-law. Many of the 14 essays in How to Be Alone, by the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Corrections, first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and elsewhere. A long, much-discussed rumination on the American novel, (newly) titled "Why Bother?," is included, as well as essays on privacy obsession, the U.S. post office, New York City, big tobacco, and new prisons. At his best, as in "My Father's Brain," a piece on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, Franzen can make the ordinary world utterly riveting. But at times, it can be difficult to discern where Franzen stands on any particular subject, as he often takes both sides of an argument. Valid attempts to reflect ambiguity s! ometimes lead to obfuscation, especially in his essays on privacy and tobacco, although his belief that small-town America of years gone by offered the individual little privacy certainly rings true. Franzen can write with panache, as in this comment after he watched, without headphones, a TV show during a flight: "(It) became an exposé of the hydraulics of insincere smiles." A few of the shorter pieces appear to be filler. Franzen shines brightest when he gets edgy and a little angry, as in "The Reader in Exile": "Instead of Manassas battlefield, a historical theme park. Instead of organizing narratives, a map of the world as complex as the world itself. Instead of a soul, membership in a crowd. Instead of wisdom, data." --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca

How to Be Alone

Paperback. Pub Date :2014-02-11 Pages: 400 Language: English Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd The long-awaited novel from the bestselling. award-winning author of 'Evening' is a literary tour de force set in war-torn Africa . The Lord's Resistance Army. led by warlord Joseph Kony. has terrorised northern Uganda for years. mutilating and murdering people as they raid villages. kidnapping and raping children to expand Kony's 'family'. This is the fate in store for Esther. She is one of 139 students abducted from St Mary's School When their headmistress tracks them down she must accept a dreadful bargain;.. most of the girls will be released. only if thirty remain with the rebels Esther is one of the thirty And eventually she will. have to learn to live with all she has seen and done to survive. Jane is an American writer. observing the glamour of Kenyan ex-pat life while she waits...

Untitled Novel

Susan Minot

Thirty Girls

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Fourth Estate Ltd. publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Fourth Estate Ltd.