This triumphant conclusion to A. S. Byatt's great quartet of postwar English life and manners stands on its own as a magical and thought-provoking novel of ideas made flesh. Frederica, the spirited heroine of The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower, falls almost by accident into a career in television in London, while tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to split her world. In the late 1960s, the languages of religion,...

As a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and trace their movements from London to Yorkshire-and from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany-an extraordinary counterpoint of passions & ideas emerges. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives...

When they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now, the sisters are grown and have become hostile strangers—until a figure from their past, a man they once both loved and suffered over, reenters their lives. It is the skittish, snake-obsessed Simon who draws Julia and Cassandra into his charismatic orbit ... and into menacing proximity

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handful of brilliantly imaginative historical and contemporary fairy stories for grow-ups by the Booker Prize-winning author of "Possession". Packaged in a beautiful little illustrated edition similar to Byatt's extremely successful collection, "The Matisse Stories", this collection will make a lovely, affordably priced gift that will introduce her magical writing to many new readers.

While attending a conference in Istanbul, Dr. Alithea Binnie happens to encounter a djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems: first, she doubts that he's real, and second, because she's a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually, she's beguiled and makes a wish that surprises...

Roland is an academic researcher who discovers some important letters written by a famous Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash. Ash was presumed to have been totally devoted to his wife, but Roland finds letters written to another unnamed woman, and soon determines that the intended recipient was another, less well-known poet, Christabel LaMotte. Roland contacts Maud, an expert on LaMotte's life and work. Despite her skepticism, the two begin to investigate,...