Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl

$6.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: good

In these wickedly anarchic stories, Dahl explores the dark, sinister side of the psyche: the cunning, sly, selfish part of human nature that makes for unexpected outcomes and horrifying conclusions.

Junky by William S. Burroughs; Allen Ginsberg (Introduction by)

$6.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: good

Junk is not, like alcohol or a weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. In his debut novel, Junky , Burroughs fictionalized his experiences using and peddling heroin and other drugs in the 1950s into a work that reads like a field report from the underworld of post-war America. The Burroughs-like protagonist of the novel, Bill Lee, see-saws between periods of addiction and rehab, using a panoply of substances including heroin, cocaine, marijuana, paregoric (a weak tincture of opium) and goof balls (barbiturate), amongst others. For this definitive edition, renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to archival typescripts to re-created the author's original text word by word. From the tenements of New York to the queer bars of New Orleans, Junky takes the reader into a world at once long-forgotten and still with us today. Burroughs' s first novel is a cult classic and a critical part of his oeuvre. ...Show more

The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima

$6.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Series: The\Sea of Fertility Ser. | Reading Level: very good

As the dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility, The Decay of the Angel brings together themes that have branched through the three previous novels--the meaning (and decay) of Japan's courtly tradition, the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy, and Mishima's apocalyptic vision of the modern age.

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams ; and other prose writings by Sylvia Plath

$8.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Everyman by Philip Roth

$6.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Philip Roth's novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous ad ulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes. The terrain of this novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all. ...Show more

The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi

$6.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: good

Shahid is a clean-cut student trying to make an impression on his college lecturer, Deedee Osgood, who gives his spirits a lift when she takes him to a naked rave party. Shahid's academic prospects are threatened by the intervention of his gangster brother, Chili, who, with his Armani suits and Gucci lo afers, moves into Shahid's bedsit as a hideout, bringing unnecessary danger and excitement with him. Set in London in 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fatwah, The Black Album is a thriller with a characteristically lively background: raves, ecstasy, religious ferment and sexual passion in a dangerous time. ...Show more

Groupie by Jenny Fabian; Johnny Byrne

$8.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: very good

When Groupie was first published in 1969 it caused a sensation. The Swingin' Sixties capacity to outrage may have been starting to decline, but this novel managed to shock all over again. A thinly fictionalised chronicle of Jenny Fabian's adventures with underground rock heroes of her day, Groupie cause d a furore for all kinds of reasons...it had the scent of danger that accompanies an authentic original, it ruffled feathers with its matter of fact descriptions of drug taking and sexual high jinks, it prompted guessing games about teh true identities of its principal characters, most of all, it was highly explicity about a phenomenon that had never before been documented. Almost three decades later, this book is still extraordinarily fresh and playing the celebrity guessing game is still fun. Groupie is also the genuine article - no reconstruction of Sixties underground rock culture has ever captured the Zeitgist as as well as this novel. ...Show more

Gigi and the Cat by Colette

$5.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: very good

In these two superb stories of the politics of love, Colette is at her witty, instinctive best. Gigi is being educated in the skills of the Courtesan: to choose cigars, to eat lobster, to enter a world where a woman's chief weapon is her body. However, when it comes to the question of Gaston Lachaille, very rich and very bored, Gigi does not want to obey the rules. In 'The Cat', a wonderful story of burgeoning sexuality and blossoming love, an exquisite strong-minded Russian Blue is struggling for mastery of Alain with his seductive fiancee, Camille. ...Show more

The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

$8.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Series: Pocket Penguin Classics | Reading Level: very good

There is no braver officer in Napoleon's cavalry than etienne Gerard - especially in his own opinion. Whether kidnapped by gangs of brigands or outnumbered by enemy troops, the plucky little soldier is constantly gallant, chivalrous and ready to face any danger, even if he doesn't always think before he acts. With great gusto Gerard recounts the swashbuckling exploits and adventures of his glittering military career - carrying out secret missions for Napoleon, eluding capture by the Duke of Wellington, making a daring break from an English prison, rescuing ladies in distress, duelling to the death against the dastardly Baron Straubenthal and even saving the day at the Battle of Waterloo. ...Show more

The People's Act of Love by James Meek

$6.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: good

"Doctor Zhivago . . . Anna Karenina . . . A Hero of Our Time . . . The People's Act of Love will remind you of all these books . . . Magnificent" (The Washington Post Book World). Set in a time of great social upheaval, warfare, and terrorism, and against a stark, lawless Siberia at the end of the Russ ian Revolution, The People's Act of Love portrays the fragile coexistence of a beautiful, independent mother raising her son alone, a megalomaniac Czech captain and his restless regiment, and a mystical separatist Christian sect. When a mysterious, charismatic stranger trudges into their snowy village with a frighteningly outlandish story to tell, its balance is shaken to the core. "The narrative drive is amazing. So is the cold clarity of Meek's imagination." --Stephen King "Meeks builds multiple narratives to a bloody, satisfying, yet unsettling conclusion. People's Act of Love stands not only as a keenly observed historical thriller but as a resonant tale of how one man's moral fervor can turn to horror." --Entertainment Weekly "Meek expertly renders each man's devotion to the task of securing paradise on earth, and exposes the unsettling affinity between the devout servant of God and the cold, calculating murderer." --The New Yorker "Set during the waning days of the Russian revolution, Meek's utterly absorbing novel captivates with its depiction of human nature in all its wartime extremes." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "This ingenious, intricate novel, a meditation on grand ideas that is also a suspenseful page turner, avoids that too-easy wonder Russia often inspires in its admirers." --The New York Times Book Review ...Show more

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

$6.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Series: Ff Classics Ser. | Reading Level: very good

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of Never Let Me Go Winner of the Booker Prize A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, e mbarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past. ...Show more

Love with a Few Hairs by Mohammed Mrabet; Paul Bowles

$4.00 NZD

Category: Vintage Fiction | Reading Level: good