Forsaking All Others Temporary Set Back Storycuts

In 'Forsaking All Others', Julia Nicholson is blissfully happy. She's married to the wonderful David, they have a gorgeous home and a ginger kitten called Kitchen, and she wouldn't change a thing. Until a chance encounter with the devastatingly attractive film director, Richard de Lisle, shows her what she never knew she was missing. In 'Temporary Set-Back', for Jenny, the only good thing about working at fusty publishers Mildew & Rambridge is the delectable editor Rupert Rambridge. Jenny is desperate for him to notice her - if only he'd pay her a fraction of the attention that handsome but sleazy Mr Curtis does. The chance to temp for Mr Rambridge's usual secretary might just see her daydreams become reality - but does she really know the type of man she's dealing with? Part of the Storycuts series, these two short stories were previously published in the collection Lisa & Co.

Two fabulous Christmas short stories by the inimitable Jilly Cooper! In 'Christmas Stocking', unlucky-in-love Caroline is facing possibly the most miserable Christmas of her life. She can't quite see how she'll cope with the season of goodwill to all men - particularly holed up on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors with her boisterous family. And things get a whole lot more complicated when her brother arrives with a deliciously dishevelled friend in tow, Jamie . . . In 'Sister to the Bride' Helen finds herself in the wedding from hell. The groom's family are constantly sneering at her, her bridesmaid's dress is frightful, and she just can't shake off the unwanted attentions of ginger chinless wonder Tubby Langley. But then Helen meets the devastating David. Dare she risk her fragile heart once again?

In 'Lisa', Paul Buchanan is used to women falling at his feet. So when he meets dowdy little Lisa Aitken at his publisher's office, he is surprised when she appears immune to his charms. Piqued, he tries again. And again. And again, until she finally relents and lets him take her out. Pretty soon, there's something about the mysterious Lisa that has Paul hooked. But why is she so cagey about where she goes every weekend? What is the secret that Lisa is hiding so desperately? In 'Political Asylum', Virginia has landed on her feet with her first flat in London: a fabulous pad near the House of Commons, with her best friend Jenny, and with the handsomest man in the Cabinet, Anthony Hudson, as their neighbour. The only fly in the ointment is Virginia's boyfriend William, whose affections towards her seem to be cooling somewhat. Things get a little more interesting when Virginia finds herself locked out of her flat in the pouring rain - and who should come to her rescue but Anthony... Part of the Storycuts series, these two short stories were precviously published in the collection Lisa & Co.

Barbara can hardly believe her older sister is getting married. With all the excitement of wedding plans going on, Barbara can't help dreaming of the day she will be the bride. She can't wait to fall in love. But as the big day gets closer, wedding planning often turns into family arguments. Even the bride and groom are bickering over details, and Barbara's fun-loving sister is turning into a very practical, grown-up person. Weddings are fun, but all this serious stuff is scary enough to make Barbara think she's not going to be rushing into a serious romance any time soon.

Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology--to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers--among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness. The Space of Literature, first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot's thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This book consists not so much in the application of a critical method or the demonstration of a theory of literature as in a patiently deliberate meditation upon the literary experience, informed most notably by studies of Mallarmé, Kafka, Rilke, and Hölderlin. Blanchot's discussions of those writers are among the finest in any language.

From the recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature—perhaps our most beloved author—a new selection of her peerless short fiction, gathered from the collections of the last two decades, a companion volume to Selected Stories (1968-1994). By all accounts, no Nobel Prize in recent years has garnered the enthusiastic reception that Alice Munro's has, and in its wake, her reputation and readership has skyrocketed worldwide. Now, Family Furnishings will bring us twenty-five of her most accomplished, most powerfully affecting stories, most of them set in the territory she has so brilliantly made her own: the small towns and flatlands of southwestern Ontario. Subtly honed with the author's hallmark precision, grace, and compassion, these stories illuminate the ordinary but quite extraordinary particularity in the lives of men, women, and children as they discover sex, fall in love, part, quarrel, head out into the unknown, suffer defeat, and find a way to be in the world. As the Nobel Prize presentation speech reads in part: "Reading one of Alice Munro's texts is like watching a cat walk across a laid dinner table. A brief short story can often cover decades, summarizing a life, as she moves deftly between different periods. No wonder Alice Munro is often able to say more in thirty pages than an ordinary novelist is capable of in three hundred. She is a virtuoso of the elliptical and . . . the master of the contemporary short story."

Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike.