Best Selling Books by A.S. Byatt

The interplay between fiction and history forms the core of Byatt''s essays as she explores historical storytelling and the translation of historical fact into fiction.

In this sequel to ''The Virgin in the Garden, '' in the 1950s, Stephanie Potter, now married to a clergyman, is conflicted about her domestic life and her strivings for intellectual fulfillment; her brilliant sister Frederica eagerly embarks on her academic (and sexual) education at Cambridge University; and their troubled brother Marcus painfully tries to find friendship and love.

As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. Struggling to make sense of her new wartime life, she is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, Byatt’s mesmerising tale - inspired by the myth of Ragnarok - is a landmark piece of storytelling from one of the world''s truly great writers.

The only piece of erotic literature in the Bible, this book was regarded by earlier devotees as an allegory of God''s love for his people. Taking the form of a poem, the song tells of two lovers praising each other''s bodies. The text is introduced by A.S. Byatt

** Winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Anthology** In 1919 Sigmund Freud published an essay that delved deep into the tradition of horror writing and claimed to understand one of its darkest tricks. Like a mad scientist, he performed literary vivisection on a still-breathing body of work, exploring its inner anatomy, and pulling out mysterious organs for classification. His aim: to present to the world a complete theory of ‘das unheimliche’, the uncanny. In the spirit of this great experiment, 14 leading authors have here been challenged to write fresh fictional interpretations of what the uncanny might mean in the 21st century, to update Freud’s famous checklist of what gives us the creeps, and to give the hulking canon of uncanny fiction a shot in the arm, a shock to the neck-bolts... ''It’s not too great a stretch to see Comma as the literary equivalent of Factory Records.'' - The Herald, 2 Dec. ''Delightful and disturbing'' - The Independent on Sunday, 14 Dec. ''A masterclass in understated creepiness... a deliciously macabre collection that the old Austrian might well have enjoyed.'' - Book of the Week, Time Out, 12 Jan. ''If we need the uncanny – and I suspect we do – then we also need it updating... laudable.'' - Book of the Week, The Independent, 2 Jan. ''A bold idea.'' - The Guardian, 3 Jan.