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Naomi Ishiguro's fresh, magical and delightfully speculative short story collection merges the inventiveness of David Mitchell and the fairy-tale allure of Angela Carter to form its own powerful magic. Witness what happens when a space-obsessed child conjures up a vortex in his mother's airing cupboard in Shearing Season. Watch unexpected possibilities open up in The Flat Roof when a musician makes friends with a flock of birds. Get lost in the world of The Rat Catcher where, finding himself potentially out of his depth when he is summoned to a decaying royal palace, a rat catcher is plunged into a battle for the throne of a ruined kingdom. In this stunning debut collection, the characters yearn for freedom and flight, and find their worlds transformed beyond their wildest imaginings. 'Naomi Ishiguro's crystal clear prose delights and intrigues' Sharlene Teo 'Winsomely written and engagingly quirky, these are inventive tales that favour imagination over gritty realism.' The Sunday Times 'Ishiguro's imagination is a place where the fantastical lurks in the margins as a possibility, a flavour rather than a genre' The Herald
*An Evening Standard Must Read, Grazia Best Book of 2021 and Independent Debut Not to Miss* 'Beautifully written, this is a book of real hope and connection' Stylist Did you ever have a friend who made you see the world differently? Stan did, and his name was Charlie. They crossed paths by chance one day, cycling on Goshawk Common. Fearless, clever, older, Charlie was everything Stan - bullied and adrift after his father's death - wanted to be. Charlie taught Stan to ask questions, to stand on his own two feet. But could their friendship endure in a world that offered these two boys such different prospects? When the two meet again, as adults, the tables have turned, and while Stan is revelling in all the city has to offer, Charlie is the one struggling. But will Stan be there for the man who once showed him the meaning of loyalty?
'The very definition of a page-turner, it's suburban noir at its finest' HARRIET TYCE Do you have any idea what the people you know are capable of? Bestselling author of All My Lies Are True, Dorothy Koomson, asks how well you can really know your neighbours. Fans of Lisa Jewell and Louise Candlish will rip through the pages of this addictive new thriller. What if all your neighbours' secrets landed in a diary on your doorstep? What if the woman who gave it to you was murdered by one of the people in the diary? What if the police asked if you knew anything? Would you hand over the book of secrets? Or ... would you try to find out what everyone had done? I Know What You've Done is the unputdo...
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller Featured in Barack Obama's Summer Reading List 2021 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times 'The Sun always has ways to reach us.' From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In Klara and the Sun, his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly-changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love? 'Beautiful' Guardian 'Flawless' The Times 'Devastating' FT 'Another masterpiece' Observer
*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available*Shortlisted for the Booker PrizeEngland, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Moving between London and Shanghai of the interwar years, When We Were Orphans is a remarkable story of memory, intrigue and the need to return.'You seldom read a novel that so convinces you it is extending the possibilities of fiction.' John Carey, Sunday Times'Ishiguro is the best and most original novelist of his generation and When We Were Orphans could be by no other writer. It haunts the mind. It moves to tears.' Susan Hill, Mail on Sunday'Discloses a writer not only near the height of his powers but in a league all of his own.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent
*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available* Kazuo Ishiguro's highly acclaimed debut, first published in 1982, tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories take on a disturbing cast. 'A macabre and faultlessly worked enigma.' Sunday Times 'One of the outstanding fictional debuts of recent years.' Observer 'A delicate, ironic, elliptical novel . Its characters are remarkably convincing . but what one remembers is its balance, halfway between elegy and irony.' New York Times Book Review 'An extraordinarily fine first novel . its themes are deceptively large and uncommonly haunting.' Los Angeles Times
Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. When Ray turns up to visit his old university friends Charlie and Emily, he's given a special task: to be so much his useless self that he makes Charlie look good by comparison.But Ray has his own buried feelings to contend with. Decades earlier, he and Emily would listen to jazz when they were alone, and now, as Sarah Vaughan sings through the speakers, he struggles to control everything the sound brings with it.In Kazuo Ishiguro's hands, a snapshot of domestic realism becomes a miniature masterpiece of memory and forgetting.
'A chilling story' -- Independent Charles and Laura live a sheltered, gilded life in the the privileged world of Cambridge academia: young and in love, their marriage is blessed by a wonderful child - Naomi. On Christmas Eve morning, Charles sets off with Naomi on a shopping trip to London. By the end of the day, all Charles and his wife have left are cups of tea and police sympathy... Their beautiful, angelic only child, has disappeared. Days later her murdered body is discovered... but is she dead?
Bob Slocum was a promising executive. He had an attractive wife, three children, a nice house, and as many mistresses as he desired. His life was settled and ordered; he had conformed and society demanded he be happy - or at least pretend to be, But the pretence was becoming more and more difficult, as Slocum's discontent grew into an overwhelming sense of desolation, frustration and fear. And then something happened. . .
Kim Byeongsu is losing his mind. Quite literally. He keeps forgetting the little things in life, like basic words, whether or not he has a dog, the last time he killed someone... In his prime, Byeongsu was one of the best murderers around, spending years obsessively trying to perfect his technique, only killing in the pursuit of artistry. And then he gave it all up to be a dedicated father to his adopted-daughter, Eunhui. Now though, suffering from the onset of dementia, he decides to come out of retirement one last time and for one final target: his daughter's boyfriend, who he believes is a serial killer just like him. After all, it takes one to know one. In other dark and glittering tales, an affair between two childhood friends questions the limits of loyalty and love; a family disintegrates after a baby son is kidnapped and recovered years later; and a wild, erotic pursuit of creativity might just come at the expense of all sanity. 'Filled with the kind of sublime, galvanizing stories that strike like a lightning bolt, searing your nerves' Nylon