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Losing none of the exuberance and verbal agility which have become a hallmark of Simon Armitage's poetry, these poems are more obviously personal - the ensuing risks, of vulnerability and exposure, more dangerous. The poems mark a coming-of-age of a poet who is by now established as a leading voice. The book is arranged in three sections. The first part, the 'Book of Matches', is a series of sonnets. Each poem is designed to relay the urgency of a struck match, packed with discoveries, flashes of insights on family and life. The poems in the middle section, 'Becoming of Age' relate incidents, from other times, other lives and experiences, to a common life. The final section, 'Reading the Bans', is a moving sequence of poems on the poet's marriage.

Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley's Staying Alive, which became Britain's most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers who've wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. Staying Alive didn't just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn't read poetry for years because it hadn't held their interest. Now Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. If readers were surprised by Staying Alive, the publishers were even more staggered by the postbag they received in response.People from all walks of life wrote to express their thanks and appreciation, saying how much Staying Alive had helped or stimulated them and fired up their interest in poetry. They hadn't just bought one copy, they'd bought many copies to give to friends and family as presents. They also wanted to tell editor Neil Astley about other poems which had been important to them in their own lives, and Being Alive includes many powerful poems suggested by readers. Staying Alive has so far sold 75,000 copies. Being Alive is eagerly awaited by thousands of readers throughout Britain and Ireland.

A collection of stories by the award-winning author of Love Your Enemies. They feature a fantastical world in which an unborn baby escapes an unsuitable mother through a belly-button zip, a disgruntled job applicant steals his interviewer's garden pond, and a new father feeds his hand to an owl.

Jake is a successful 34-year-old man when DI Davey Green arrives to take him back to Manchester, where 15 years ago, Jake ran wild. In Manchester, Jake's friend, Johnny, had been murdered. Now another corpse has been found, and Jake must finally confront the ghosts of despair that haunt him.

Edith Hope is in disgrace and working out her probation on the shores of Lake Geneva. Friends and family have banished her to seemly Swiss solitude until such times as she recovers her senses.

A collection of poems from Kate Clanchy, covering such subjects as relationships between men and women, married men, self-sufficient men and wounded men. Other poems are about memory and time, set in school classrooms and muddy sports fields, and haunting, tender love poems.

In The Shooting Party, Isabel Colegate brilliantly dissects the English class system. On the eve of the Great War, a stunning array of guests and an army of servants are gathered at an Oxfordshire estate in preparation for the most important shoot of the season. Sporting rivalry, the inequities of class, the slaughter of animals and the bounds of sportsmanship are all examined in minute detail.

One of a series of titles first published by Faber between 1930 and 1990, and in a style and format planned with a view to the appearance of the volumes on the bookshelf. These poems by Wendy Cope include parodies 'by Jason Strugnell' of Radio 3's 'Shall I Call Thee Bard?', and lyrical poems.

An unconventional love story and thriller set in London. Katherine, a taxi-driver with attitude, has the black cab equivalent of a lover in every port and an inability to commit to any of them. But an encounter with an awkward passenger is set to wreak havoc with her carefully controlled life and force her to confront demons from the past. Selected for World Book Day 2003 - England.

Three women in their 50's question, re-evaluate and examine their motives and directions in the brutally prosperous society of 1980s Britain. Moving from black comedy to acute social observation, Drabble picks up some of the characters and stories of The Radiant Way.