<div>Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A masterwork of love, guilt, and friendship set in Victorian Liverpool and Eastern Europe during the Crimean War. Photography is the common thread weaving together three different points of view that span the years from 1846 to 1854. The first &ldquo;plate&rdquo; opens with the account of Myrtle, a young orphan girl, as she is taking a photograph of her adoptive father, Mr. Hardy, who has just passed away in Liverpool. The sudden and unsavory circumstances of Mr. Hardy&rsquo;s death bind Myrtle and the other characters of this story together as history propels them toward the frontlines of the Crimean War. Myrtle&rsquo;s adoptive brother, George Hardy, or &ldquo;Master Georgie&rdquo; as he is called, is an amateur photographer and handsome surgeon. When he heads east in 1854 to offer his medical services to the conflict raging between Russia and Turkey&mdash;a war it seems England will inevitably enter&mdash;Myrtle follows him, as does George&rsquo;s brother-in-law, a high-minded geologist named Dr. Potter. The group travels to Valetta, Malta, and Constantinople, then on to Varna, where George will be stationed. As the caravan proceeds, the group crosses paths with Pompey Jones, a street urchin, photographer&rsquo;s assistant, and sometimes fire breather, who is a dear friend of George&rsquo;s and was with him the day his father died. It soon becomes clear that George&rsquo;s affections are torn between Pompey and Myrtle. Dr. Potter, meanwhile, pines for the affections of his wife, who is hundreds of miles away. The conflicting emotions in the travelers&rsquo; hearts are amplified by the misery, disease, and filth they must endure&mdash;as well as the other, more unthinkable, horrors of war. A sparse yet vivid historical novel, Master Georgie delves into themes of distorted truth, the psychological effects of war, unrequited love, and the will to survive. Called &ldquo;a true novelist&rsquo;s novel&rdquo; by the Guardian, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

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Master Georgie

<div>The dramatic, fictionalized account of Robert Falcon Scott&rsquo;s famed and fatal expedition to Antarctica by one of Britain&rsquo;s best-loved authors. Departing from Cardiff in 1910, the Terra Nova entered dark waters and headed south. On board were Petty Officer Edgar &ldquo;Taff&rdquo; Evans, Dr. Edward &ldquo;Uncle Bill&rdquo; Wilson, Capt. Robert Falcon &ldquo;Con&rdquo; Scott, Lt. Henry Robertson &ldquo;Birdie&rdquo; Bowers, and Capt. Lawrence Edward &ldquo;Titus&rdquo; Oates. Through an imaginative yet historically accurate retelling of the crew&rsquo;s mission to become the first explorers to reach the South Pole&mdash;and with each of the book&rsquo;s five chapters narrated from the unique perspective of one of these men&mdash;author Beryl Bainbridge imbues a tragic and thrilling adventure story with profound psychological, metaphysical, and emotional insight. The first three chapters of The Birthday Boys&mdash;recounted by Evans, Wilson, and Scott, respectively&mdash;tell of the preparations and fundraising required for the journey, two stopovers in Madeira and South Trinidad Island, and the difficult conditions the expedition faces when they land on Antarctica. It is Wilson who first fears for the safety of the crew, when from atop the ship&rsquo;s crow&rsquo;s-nest he spies a fantastical half-man-half-bird creature flying above the sea. The doctor is certain this apparition is a harbinger of death. Troubles then ensue when Scott sets up a base camp at Cape Evans as well as several depots in the direction of the South Pole. The motor sledge breaks down almost immediately, several ponies are lost to the harsh elements, and it is revealed that a competing polar expedition led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen is already well ahead of Scott&rsquo;s team. In the final two chapters&mdash;told by Bowers and Oates&mdash;readers are taken on a dangerous but spectacular detour to a penguin rookery, where the men witness gorgeous auroras, build an igloo, gather eggs, and slaughter the arctic birds for their blubber. When a violent blizzard hits, it looks as if no one will make it out alive. But brotherly love in the face of all odds gives the men the power to survive, and the five heroes set off on their final march to the South Pole. Though history has already revealed the catastrophic end of this tale, Bainbridge shows us the bravery, courage, and humanity essential to the adventure. Masterfully blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, The Birthday Boys is a compelling historical biography that challenges readers to discover truths that can only be reached through the imagination. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

The Birthday Boys

<div>Winner of the Whitbread Literary Award: A darkly humorous tale about a 1970s dinner party gone terribly wrong by one of Britain&rsquo;s most renowned authors. Edward is normally a cautious man, especially when it comes to his mistress, Binny. But he feels bad that his lover never gets to enjoy the small intimacies of marriage, like sorting his socks or picking out gifts for his family. It is out of this guilt that Edward agrees to throw a dinner party with his &ldquo;real friends&rdquo; so Binny can feel more involved in his life and play hostess for a night. But there&rsquo;s one catch: Edward has to be home no later than eleven to keep his wife from discovering his infidelity. The invitees to the secret soiree are a discreet couple: Simpson, an aspiring adulterer himself, and Muriel, a simultaneously disapproving and open-minded housewife. But as Binny haphazardly prepares the food, shoos her children out for the night, and frets about the aesthetics of her front lawn, the guests take an unintended detour through her run-down neighborhood. Edward, meanwhile, is silently panicking&mdash;and drinking. Simpson and Muriel finally arrive, and when everyone sits down to eat, it&rsquo;s already a quarter past nine. Things get off to a decent, if awkward, start, until there&rsquo;s a loud knock at the door. It&rsquo;s Binny&rsquo;s scandalously drunk old friend, Alma, who proceeds to vomit and pass out. But what should be the end of the evening is only the beginning. More unexpected guests arrive&mdash;this time it&rsquo;s bank robbers with sawed-off shotguns. What follows is a chaotic and hilarious series of events, replete with a fake ping-pong match, a baby carriage full of cash, and a delirious getaway. Edward soon begins to worry less about getting home on time, and more about making it home at all. Equal parts dark comedy and thriller, Injury Time is a witty take on 1970s social mores by one of the most celebrated British authors, Beryl Bainbridge, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

Injury Time

<div>Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: In postwar Liverpool, a teenager joins a theater troupe to escape her working-class life&mdash;and is drawn into a darker world. From one of Britain&rsquo;s best-loved novelists, this is the story of Stella Bradshaw, an orphaned sixteen-year-old with dreams of getting out of her boardinghouse in the slums. Unwilling to resign herself to a job at Woolworth&rsquo;s, she finds a place at the Liverpool Repertory Company instead. She quickly falls head over heels for the rundown theater&rsquo;s dissolute director, Meredith Potter, but he has no interest in her. And Stella is too na&iuml;ve to understand why. As she tries to gain experience with other colleagues in the hope of one day seducing Meredith, the director is faced with a crisis when a cast member is injured just as the company&rsquo;s production of Peter Pan is about to open. The replacement is an older man, a war hero and a prominent actor&mdash;and he&rsquo;s instantly drawn to Stella. But while the romance that follows may be innocent, its implications are far from wholesome. Named by the Times (London) as one of the &ldquo;fifty greatest British writers since 1945,&rdquo; author Beryl Bainbridge portrays working-class England in the aftermath of World War II with her signature dark humor and dry wit. Adapted into a 1995 film starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman, An Awfully Big Adventure is an atmospheric historical novel about the loss of innocence with a definitively modern&mdash;and chilling&mdash;twist. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

An Awfully Big Adventure

<div>The infamous Parker&ndash;Hulme murder case inspired this frightening tale of adolescent transgression in an English seaside town. When a thirteen-year-old girl returns from boarding school to her small hometown in Merseyside for summer break, her best friend, Harriet, is not back yet, and she&rsquo;s restless, anxious for something&mdash;anything&mdash;to happen. In this state of troubled anticipation, she visits the beach and encounters Peter Biggs, an elegant yet disheveled man in the throes of middle age and an unhappy marriage. A stirring inside of the budding woman makes her feel irresistibly attracted to this man . . . and simultaneously repulsed. But she doesn&rsquo;t dare do anything about it until Harriet arrives. One year older and much more mischievous, Harriet returns to find her friend in a state of confused obsession. The two girls hatch a plan to &ldquo;humble&rdquo; Biggs. At Harriet&rsquo;s command they proceed to methodically spy on him and his wife, manipulate his desires, and ensnare him in an act of incriminating humiliation, all on the premise that this will be their most daring summer yet. But the power these young women possess is perhaps more sinister and unwieldy than anyone realizes. Award-winning British author Beryl Bainbridge&rsquo;s first novel, Harriet Said is loosely based on the Parker&ndash;Hulme teenage murder case in New Zealand dramatized in the Kate Winslet film Heavenly Creatures. It was originally completed in 1958; however, editors were so scandalized by its gruesome and amoral content that the book was not published until 1972. It has since become a horror classic. </div>

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Harriet Said

<div>A novel of marital bickering&mdash;and murder&mdash;based on a historical case in Victorian England, from the bestselling author of The Birthday Boys. In the winter of 1884, John Selby Watson, a clergyman and headmaster living in London, writes a series of love letters&mdash;including a marriage proposal&mdash;to a woman he met only briefly at a social gathering many years before. Though Anne Armstrong does not remember Watson, she is desperate to escape poverty and the miserable life she shares with her sister in a moldy Dublin boarding house. So she accepts. Despite the abrupt circumstances of their engagement&mdash;and Anne&rsquo;s initial distaste for her betrothed&mdash;several years of happy marriage follow. But Watson soon becomes entrenched in his studies of classical literature, leaving his wife feeling alienated and dejected. Trivial disputes agitate the couple&rsquo;s domestic life with increasing frequency&mdash;a letter goes missing, the page of a book gets stained&mdash;until the bickering erupts into full-blown abuse and, during a night of drinking, their toxic environment reaches its destructive climax. Based on a real nineteenth-century murder case, Watson&rsquo;s Apology is a speculative novel about the complex psychological motivations that underlie a seemingly straightforward domestic tragedy. Using dark irony and twisted humor, award-winning British author Beryl Bainbridge reveals the terror that resides in the banal, and the suspense that can be found in the mysteries of the mind and heart. </div>

Watson's Apology

<div>The complete short stories&mdash;including six previously uncollected works and one novella&mdash;of award-winning British literary giant Beryl Bainbridge. From one of the United Kingdom&rsquo;s most famed female novelists come nineteen different takes on the often cruel, usually comic, and utterly strange realities of human life and imagination. From the collection Mum and Mr Armitage is the eponymous tale in which two pranksters at a holiday resort play &ldquo;harmless&rdquo; jokes on the people and livestock that surround them&mdash;until they must pay the price for taking the fun too far. In &ldquo;The Longstop,&rdquo; unspoken familial information collides with a game of cricket, and in &ldquo;People for Lunch,&rdquo; two lovers are ironically compelled to ruminate on the dilemmas of adultery. And among the previously uncollected work compiled here are &ldquo;The Man from Wavertree&rdquo; and &ldquo;Poles Apart.&rdquo; The former is a quick look into the eccentric world of Rose and her tenant, Purdy, who is trying to sell his motorbike. The latter tells the story of a popular woman in her late seventies who tells a lie in an attempt to get out of a Christmas party invitation, only to find out her fib has come true. Collected Stories concludes with &ldquo;Filthy Lucre,&rdquo; a Victorian melodrama that author Beryl Bainbridge wrote when she was only thirteen. In this precocious tale, a dying man asks a friend to take revenge on the family he thinks has cheated him out of his inheritance. What follows is a surprisingly mature and thoroughly sensational tale of murder, deception, love, and treasure islands. Called a &ldquo;consummate storyteller&rdquo; by the Sunday Times, Bainbridge was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times in her career, and is perhaps best known for her psychological novels The Bottle Factory Outing and Injury Time. However, her short fiction, hailed by the Times as &ldquo;impressive,&rdquo; is equally masterful. </div>

Collected Stories

<div>This historical novel set during the eighteenth century recounts the tumultuous final years of famed English lexicographer and poet Samuel Johnson. In 1764, Britain&rsquo;s greatest man of letters&mdash;the writer of the first English dictionary&mdash;shut himself in his room and refused to come out. Exhausted from working on an edition of Shakespeare&rsquo;s plays, Samuel Johnson had fallen into a deep depression. He refused to eat and only opened his door to cry out incomprehensible phrases or empty his chamber pot. Finally, a priest was able to lure the scholar out of confinement, and, as he did, Johnson&rsquo;s friend Henry Thrales arrived. Shocked by Johnson&rsquo;s fit of madness, Thrales promptly whisked the man away for recuperation at a country mansion south of London. Thus began one of the happiest periods of Johnson&rsquo;s life. At the Thrales residence in Streatham, Johnson regained his sanity and engaged in family life. He selected books for the estate&rsquo;s library, joked around at parties, and became close to Thrales&rsquo;s wife, Hester. But as the years passed, the affection between Johnson and Hester developed into a dark romantic affair, the Thrales&rsquo;s daughter grew up and became aware of her mother&rsquo;s emotional unavailability, and Johnson&rsquo;s passions and eccentricities led to cumbersome moral and spiritual dilemmas. With chapter titles taken from entries in Johnson&rsquo;s legendary dictionary, lauded British author Beryl Bainbridge paints a well-rounded portrait of an extraordinary man and his all-too-human experiences. Written from the perspective of the Thrales&rsquo;s daughter, According to Queeney heightens fact with fiction, sincerity with irony, and humor with despair. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, it is a captivating account of the Georgian era, lending modern insight to British history. </div>

According to Queeney

<div>Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: This psychological drama set in Liverpool during WWII follows the courtship of a US soldier and an English working-class girl. Rita is a passive and na&iuml;ve seventeen-year-old who has been raised by two middle-aged aunts: Nellie, a curmudgeonly dressmaker obsessed with polishing the furniture, and Margo, a lively widow wise to the ways of the world. Rita&rsquo;s father, whom she calls Uncle Jack, is too busy with his butcher shop the next town over to pay much attention to his daughter. Regardless, surrounded by the ruins of houses bombed in the Blitz, this strange family is bound together as they face wartime life in Liverpool. The government is enforcing stringent rations on even the smallest pleasures, and an influx of well-off American soldiers is wooing all the local girls. Though World War II has dramatically changed the family&rsquo;s standard of living and altered their perspective of the world, Nellie is determined to enforce her traditional ideas about the proper behavior and priorities of the lower middle class. This includes hampering the romantic desires of both Rita and Margo. It is no wonder, then, that Rita starts lying to her aunts about where she goes on Saturday nights. She has fallen in love with a Yankee GI named Ira. Or rather, she has fallen in love with the idea of this young soldier and all that he represents as someone who can make her a bride and whisk her away to a lavish life in the United States. But Ira is hardly the man she&rsquo;s dreamed of, and a relationship is the last thing on his mind. In a sinister turn of events, the years of stifled happiness finally catch up to Margo and she betrays her young niece. And through this transgression, Nellie reveals just how far she will go to enforce her rules, especially when it comes to the furniture . . . Written in strategically-doled-out prose that keeps readers on the edge of their seats, The Dressmaker is a thrilling historical novel about repressed sexuality, sibling rivalry, and the dire consequences of bigotry. An immediate classic in British fiction, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and made into a film starring Jane Horrocks, Billie Whitelaw, and Joan Plowright. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

The Dressmaker

<div>A group of eccentric friends makes a mess of their shared holiday in this witty novel from one of Britain&rsquo;s best-loved authors. When Claude stumbles upon an old photo, memories of a weekend spent in the company of his friends come back in full force. In the snapshot are Lily, a thick-ankled girl who is unlucky in love; Edward, the &ldquo;awfully quiet and awfully nice&rdquo; geologist Lily is trying to woo; &ldquo;Victorian Norman,&rdquo; a factory worker and Marxist romantic; and Shebah, an elderly Jewish drama queen who used to be in show business. But during their country-house holiday, there was deception and drama lurking behind the scenes. Through the voices of each of Claude&rsquo;s guests, author Beryl Bainbridge weaves a darkly comic tale of everyday people grasping for love&mdash;or lust&mdash;as a means of revolt against the mundane normalcy of their lives. Confined for a night and a day, they make a muck of all social pleasantries and put their friendships on the line. First written in 1967, then revised and republished in 1982, A Weekend with Claude marks a stylistic departure from Bainbridge&rsquo;s renowned third-person novels, such as The Bottle Factory Outing and Injury Time. Yet the master writer&rsquo;s singular morbidity and black humor abound, making this a welcome and entertaining read with &ldquo;the kind of dreamy, evocative quality we associate with the films of &Eacute;ric Rohmer&rdquo; (TheNew York Times). </div>

A Weekend with Claude

<div>The tragicomic tale of a dysfunctional middle-class family in postwar England from the award-winning author of Injury Time. Though the Second World War has ended, times are anything but peaceful for seventeen-year-old Alan. His father, an entrepreneur who was once able to provide the family with a comfortable life, is now struggling to put food on the table. Meanwhile, Alan&rsquo;s mother dresses as if money is plentiful and spends all her time avoiding her husband, indulging in the escapism of romance novels, and engaging in real-world love affairs. And as if a household struck by poverty and marital trouble isn&rsquo;t enough, Alan&rsquo;s bohemian sister, Madge, has been sneaking off into the sand dunes for lusty rendezvous with a German POW. All Alan wants is for his sister to stop cavorting around and driving their father mad&mdash;and for a pretty choir girl named Janet to notice him. But the more he wishes for a normal life, the more chaotic it becomes. Everyone in his family is hiding something, not only from one another but also from themselves. And they&rsquo;re all desperately clinging to something that is inevitably falling apart. Award-winning British author Beryl Bainbridge has a keen eye for the dark humor that lurks in misery and a knack for illuminating the emotional rubble of postwar England. A Quiet Life is an entertaining family drama that is at once a quick read and a lasting portrait of twentieth-century life. </div>

A Quiet Life

<div>A satirical thriller about a British adulterer in Russia from the award-winning author of The Bottle Factory Outing. Middle-class, middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road lawyer Douglas Ashburner has never been much of a womanizer. So when he tells his wife he&rsquo;s going on a fishing holiday, she takes his word for it. But instead of leaving London for Scotland, he departs from Heathrow to Moscow. Douglas is tagging along with his mistress, a sculptor named Nina St. Clair, on a tour of Russia arranged by the Soviet Artists&rsquo; Union. Accompanying them on the trip are two other artists: the impudent Bernard Douglas and the irritable Enid Dwyer. Once in Moscow, Ashburner starts to wish he really had gone fishing. He promptly loses his luggage, the food is terrible, the art is horrific, and their tour guide is downright militant. But when Nina slips out to a last-minute lunch appointment and never returns, things go from bad to disastrous. Motives are unclear. Identities are mistaken. And as the group travels from the capital to Lenigrad to Tblisi, confusion, contradictions, and even hallucinations abound. Ripe with the scathing wit, eccentric characters, and richly morbid atmosphere that have earned award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge both a cult following and mainstream praise, Winter Garden is a psychological thriller that turns an ironic lens on the social mores of modern life. </div>

Winter Garden

<div>Named by the Observer as &ldquo;one of the 100 greatest novels of all time,&rdquo; this dark comedy with a disturbing twist follows two working-class women in 1970s London. Unlikely friends Brenda and Freda share a rundown room in London and toil away at an Italian factory pasting labels onto wine bottles. Brenda, a shy and passive thirty-three-year-old brunette, recently ran away to the city to escape an abusive husband. Freda, meanwhile, is a rebellious twenty-six-year-old blonde with big dreams and a penchant for bossing people around. The two women are the only English workers at the bottling facility, and their presence certainly stirs up trouble. Freda has a crush on the trainee manager, Vittorio, and tries to get close to him despite the fact that he&rsquo;s engaged to an Italian girl. Brenda, on the other hand, spends a fair amount of time trying to distance herself from the advances of the factory&rsquo;s manager, Mr. Rossi. When Freda organizes a company outing, what&rsquo;s supposed to be a day of freedom and fun turns into a dark and chaotic tragedy. The workers plan to travel by van to a stately castle, where they will picnic and drink wine before visiting an African safari. But the van never shows up, and when they finally do make it to the castle, something goes fatally wrong. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, The Bottle Factory Outing was inspired by author Beryl Bainbridge&rsquo;s own experiences working as a cellar girl in the mid-twentieth century. Intertwining themes of loneliness and friendship, sexual frustration and personal power, passion and murder, this tragicomedy is a British classic that depicts working-class life as something both terribly morose and wickedly funny. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

The Bottle Factory Outing

<div>Social dysfunction meets dangerous perversion in this black comedy about two misfit families camping in the Welsh woods. George McFarley, a six-foot-eight hulk of a man obsessed with the Holocaust, and his assistant, Balfour, an unbearably shy stutterer, are the unconventional hosts of a weekend camping retreat in Wales. Their guests include Joseph, a divorced college administrator from London; Dotty, his pretty but resentful girlfriend; Roland, his young son; and Kidney, his overweight and emotionally disturbed apprentice. Also staying on for the weekend are dysfunctional couple, Lionel and May&mdash;and a Welsh groundskeeper with a creepy fondness for cattle . . . and little girls. Dotty has brought along the board game Monopoly, which she cannot live without, and which will serve as a microcosm for the roles and dramas played out by this motley crew. While the adults are caught up in petty bickering, power struggles, love triangles, and other bourgeois scandals, tragedy will befall one of the children and turn the bucolic setting into a twisted nightmare. With award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge&rsquo;s signature dark humor and sophisticated irony, Another Part of the Wood takes to task 1960s British cultural mores. As the plot twists and characters remove their masks, Bainbridge reveals the absurdity and danger of what is commonly considered &ldquo;normal.&rdquo; </div>

Another Part of the Wood

<div>Romantic comedy meets social satire in this delirious novel about sexual freedom versus British tradition in swinging 1960s London. When dull professor Gerald leaves London for the United States, his fianc&eacute;e, Ann, is a bit afraid and sad to see him go&mdash;never has he looked so handsome and masculine as when he&rsquo;s about to board the plane. But a few days later at a religious service, Ann is beckoned to sit next to a stranger with yellow curls and a nose like a prizefighter&rsquo;s. Her heart inexplicably begins to race; she feels like she has the flu. This stranger, William McClusky, tells Ann in his Scottish accent that he is a playwright who will be interviewed on TV the very next day. Furthermore, he promises to have a television dropped by her house so she can watch him! From this first bizarre seduction, Ann is infatuated, and in the days following, William begins to take over her life. In the throes of the affair, Ann gives up her BBC job, helps a friend get an abortion, encourages adultery, and writes a break-up letter to her fianc&eacute;. Her engagement to Gerald had been rushed, after all, and was designed to serve her mother&rsquo;s desires more than her own. With William, on the other hand, everything feels different. But is this new man really who he says he is? Is he a genius or a fraud, a compassionate soul or a cheater? Perhaps William is simply a means by which Ann can play out her dangerous fantasies and finally take part in the swinging sixties. Only one thing is certain: Now that she&rsquo;s with him, there&rsquo;s no turning back. An ironic investigation into the art of self-deception and the repercussions of sexual freedom, this blend of black comedy and social satire showcases the wit of award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge, and affirms her status as a mainstay in twentieth-century British literature. </div>

Sweet William

<div>A darkly humorous fictionalized account of Adolf Hitler&rsquo;s alleged stay in England as a young man. Before becoming the F&uuml;hrer of the Third Reich, it is said Adolf Hitler was a failed artist who bummed around at his half-brother&rsquo;s house in Liverpool from 1912 to 1913. Based on the memoir of the future despot&rsquo;s sister-in-law, Bridget Hitler, Young Adolf is a vivid imagining of this alleged visit to the United Kingdom. The story begins with Adolf aboard a ferry, aiming to avoid Austrian military service. He has no luggage, save for a book, and holds a false passport made out in the name of his dead brother, paranoid that the authorities might be tailing him. But what Adolf should be worried about is how he will be received at his destination. At the train station, his brother Alois greets him with outrage. Alois had sent money for their sister Angela to travel to Liverpool, but Adolf stole the funds. Taking refuge on the sofa for days, Adolf makes only one friend: Jewish landlord Mr. Meyer, surprisingly enough. With mutual interests in opera and architecture, the two become close, though Adolf does mention his thoughts on race relations and &ldquo;contaminated blood.&rdquo; Eventually, under pressure, Adolf stops loafing and gets a menial job. Most people think he won&rsquo;t ever amount to much, but it&rsquo;s clear that Adolf has bigger aspirations. Originally published in 1978, this was the first foray into historical fiction for award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge, who would become famous for works like Master Georgie and the bestselling Every Man for Himself. Combining dark humor and psychological intrigue, Young Adolf is a portrait of both a man and a city before two World Wars changed everything. </div>

Young Adolf

<div>Three unforgettable novels from the &ldquo;subversive and ever-mischievous imagination&rdquo; of a celebrated British author and five-time Man Booker Prize nominee (The New York Times). With crisp prose and sardonic wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself in the landscape of modern British literature. In the three novels collected here, Bainbridge explores disasters both epic and intimate, drawing inspiration from historical figures as well as her own life experiences to produce tightly woven tales that are at once ironic and honest, subtle and surprising. An Awfully Big Adventure: In postwar Liverpool, a teenage girl joins a local theater troupe and discovers the unflattering truths behind the gloss of adulthood. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this atmospheric novel was adapted into a film starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. &ldquo;A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times The Birthday Boys: In 1910, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott led a harrowing race to the South Pole. With this imaginative yet historically accurate retelling of their famous and ill-fated mission, &ldquo;Bainbridge has quite surpassed herself&rdquo; (Financial Times). &ldquo;Equally convincing in its evocations of the icy, unendurable landscape without, and the chilling interior landscapes of damaged souls.&rdquo; &mdash;The Sunday Telegraph Master Georgie: The story of a British surgeon journeying toward the horrors of the Crimean War is told from the perspective of three companions who each believe they knew him best. This &ldquo;stunning&rdquo; novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won numerous awards (The New Yorker). &ldquo;Accomplished with stupendous technical skill . . . a true novelist&rsquo;s novel.&rdquo; &mdash;The Guardian</div>

The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

<div>Three darkly comic novels from the two-time Whitbread Award winner whose &ldquo;masterful restraint . . . reveals an author in complete control of her artistry&rdquo; (The Guardian). With taut prose and mordant wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself as &ldquo;one of the most distinctive and admired voices in postwar British fiction&rdquo; (The New York Times). In the three novels collected here, she deploys her signature, unforgiving insight into human nature, drawing on her own life experience to produce tightly knit tales of innocence and mischief. The Dressmaker: For seventeen-year-old Rita, romance with an American GI feels like a Hollywood-style escape from wartime England&mdash;and the two aunts who&rsquo;ve raised her. But in this Man Booker Prize&ndash;shortlisted novel, Rita soon discovers that life is nothing like the movies. &ldquo;A little triumph of economy with pent thoughts and cramped emotions that whisper frantically on when the book is shut.&rdquo; &mdash;The Guardian The Bottle Factory Outing: Working at an Italian wine-bottling factory, London flatmates Brenda and Freda anticipate a rare day of pleasure on a company outing. Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this comic novel takes an unsettling turn only Bainbridge could deliver. &ldquo;An outrageously funny and horrifying story.&rdquo; &mdash;Graham Greene Injury Time: In this Whitbread Literary Award&ndash;winning novel, Edward and his mistress try to host a discreet dinner party, but it&rsquo;s an awkward affair to say the least. With the addition of two uninvited, rather forceful guests, more than feelings will get hurt in this &ldquo;comic and sinister&rdquo; novel (The Sunday Times). &ldquo;A near-masterpiece . . . horribly true to life.&rdquo; &mdash;London Evening Standard</div>

Beryl Bainbridge
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Books By Beryl Bainbridge (18 Books)