Most Popular Books by Beryl Bainbridge

The book that finally won Beryl Bainbridge a Booker prize: by popular vote the Best of Beryl.

If ever a subject and a writer were perfectly matched it is here. The fated voyage of the Titanic, with its heroics and horror, has been dramatized many times before, but never by an artist with the skills and sensibility of Beryl Bainbridge. Bainbridge vividly recreates each scene of the voyage, from the suspicious fire in the Number 10 coal bunker, to the champange and crystal of the first-class public rooms, to that terrible midnight chaos in the frigid North Atlantic. This is remarkable, haunting tale substantiates Bainbridge as a consummate observer of the human condition.

This historical novel set during the eighteenth century recounts the tumultuous final years of famed English lexicographer and poet Samuel Johnson. In 1764, Britain’s greatest man of letters—the writer of the first English dictionary—shut himself in his room and refused to come out. Exhausted from working on an edition of Shakespeare’s plays, Samuel Johnson had fallen into a deep depression. He refused to eat and only opened his door to cry out incomprehensible phrases or empty his chamber pot. Finally, a priest was able to lure the scholar out of confinement, and, as he did, Johnson’s friend Henry Thrales arrived. Shocked by Johnson’s fit of madness, Thrales promptly whisked the man away for recuperation at a country mansion south of London. Thus began one of the happiest periods of Johnson’s life. At the Thrales residence in Streatham, Johnson regained his sanity and engaged in family life. He selected books for the estate’s library, joked around at parties, and became close to Thrales’s wife, Hester. But as the years passed, the affection between Johnson and Hester developed into a dark romantic affair, the Thrales’s daughter grew up and became aware of her mother’s emotional unavailability, and Johnson’s passions and eccentricities led to cumbersome moral and spiritual dilemmas. With chapter titles taken from entries in Johnson’s legendary dictionary, lauded British author Beryl Bainbridge paints a well-rounded portrait of an extraordinary man and his all-too-human experiences. Written from the perspective of the Thrales’s daughter, According to Queeney heightens fact with fiction, sincerity with irony, and humor with despair. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, it is a captivating account of the Georgian era, lending modern insight to British history.

Three unforgettable novels from the “subversive and ever-mischievous imagination” of a celebrated British author and five-time Man Booker Prize nominee (The New York Times). With crisp prose and sardonic wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself in the landscape of modern British literature. In the three novels collected here, Bainbridge explores disasters both epic and intimate, drawing inspiration from historical figures as well as her own life experiences to produce tightly woven tales that are at once ironic and honest, subtle and surprising. An Awfully Big Adventure: In postwar Liverpool, a teenage girl joins a local theater troupe and discovers the unflattering truths behind the gloss of adulthood. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this atmospheric novel was adapted into a film starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. “A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb.” —The New York Times The Birthday Boys: In 1910, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott led a harrowing race to the South Pole. With this imaginative yet historically accurate retelling of their famous and ill-fated mission, “Bainbridge has quite surpassed herself” (Financial Times). “Equally convincing in its evocations of the icy, unendurable landscape without, and the chilling interior landscapes of damaged souls.” —The Sunday Telegraph Master Georgie: The story of a British surgeon journeying toward the horrors of the Crimean War is told from the perspective of three companions who each believe they knew him best. This “stunning” novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won numerous awards (The New Yorker). “Accomplished with stupendous technical skill . . . a true novelist’s novel.” —The Guardian

A “dark and brilliant” story of the secrets, sex, and violence playing out behind the scenes of a repertory theater troupe in postwar Liverpool: “Never before has showbusiness been revealed as less romantic.” (Patrick Skene Catling, The Sunday Telegraph) Liverpool, 1950. Against the grimy backdrop of the gray postwar city, a shabby, scandal-steeped repertory theater company rehearses for their Christmas performance of Peter Pan. Treading the boards for the first time is sixteen-year-old Stella Bradshaw, ambitious, idealistic, and still overwhelmingly innocent. She falls hard for the rakish, monocled director, Meredith Potter, but, unable to attract his attentions—and not understanding why he’s spending quite so much time with their male colleagues—she turns to another to initiate her in the ways of love. Enter the celebrated P. L. O’Hara, their dashing leading man who’s nursing secrets of his own. When the curtain is up, fantastical entertainment abounds, but backstage a very different drama is playing out: a pitch-black comedy of indiscretion, intrigue, and eventual tragedy. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and dusted with that magical “air of Pinteresque menace and Sparkian malice [that] lingers around the margins of [all of Beryl Bainbridge’s] fiction,” (Michiko Katutani, The New York Times Book Review), An Awfully Big Adventure is one of the author’s very best—and best-loved—novels.

In the tumultuous spring of 1968 a young English woman, Rose, travels from London to the United States to meet a man she knows as Washington Harold. In her suitcase are a polka dot dress and a one-way ticket. In an America recently convulsed by the April assassination of Martin Luther King and subsequent urban riots, they begin a search for the charismatic and elusive Dr. Wheeler- sage, prophet and, possibly, redeemer-who rescued Rose from a dreadful childhood and against whom Harold holds a seething grudge. As they follow their quarry cross-country in a camper they encounter the odd remnants of Wheeler acolytes who harbor festering cultural and political grievances. Along the way, a famous artist is shot in New York, mutilated soldiers are evacuated from Vietnam, race hatred explodes in ghettos and suburbs and casual madness blossoms at revival meetings. Many believe America''s only hope is presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, whose campaign trail echoes Rose and Harold''s pilgrimage. Both will conclude in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel one infamous night in June. Subversive, sinister and marvelously vivid, Beryl Bainbridge''s great last novel evokes a nation on the brink of self-destruction with artful brilliance.

''Extremely lively'' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ''A work of art'' SCOTSMAN ''Genius'' SUNDAY TIMES An old snapshot shows a group of friends lounging in the sunshine, on a weekend in the country at the invitation of bearded, satyric Claude and his wife Julia. The girl in the centre is dreamy Lily, whose latest failed love affair forms the purpose of the weekend, as Lily''s friends set out to help her ensnare an unwitting father for her unborn child. Next to her is Norman, a Marxist romantic hell-bent on seducing his milk-white hostess; behind them is old, persecuted Shebah; and slightly apart, the young man on whom all hopes are pinned: quiet, pleasant Edward. Told through the fractured narratives of Claude, Lily, Shebah and Norman, in Beryl Bainbridge''s first published novel a darkly comic weekend of friendship and failure unravels.

A satirical thriller about a British adulterer in Russia from the award-winning author of The Bottle Factory Outing. Middle-class, middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road lawyer Douglas Ashburner has never been much of a womanizer. So when he tells his wife he’s going on a fishing holiday, she takes his word for it. But instead of leaving London for Scotland, he departs from Heathrow to Moscow. Douglas is tagging along with his mistress, a sculptor named Nina St. Clair, on a tour of Russia arranged by the Soviet Artists’ Union. Accompanying them on the trip are two other artists: the impudent Bernard Douglas and the irritable Enid Dwyer. Once in Moscow, Ashburner starts to wish he really had gone fishing. He promptly loses his luggage, the food is terrible, the art is horrific, and their tour guide is downright militant. But when Nina slips out to a last-minute lunch appointment and never returns, things go from bad to disastrous. Motives are unclear. Identities are mistaken. And as the group travels from the capital to Lenigrad to Tblisi, confusion, contradictions, and even hallucinations abound. Ripe with the scathing wit, eccentric characters, and richly morbid atmosphere that have earned award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge both a cult following and mainstream praise, Winter Garden is a psychological thriller that turns an ironic lens on the social mores of modern life.

The complete short stories--including six previously uncollected works and one novella--of award-winning British literary giant Beryl Bainbridge. From one of the United Kingdom''s most famed female novelists come nineteen different takes on the often cruel, usually comic, and utterly strange realities of human life and imagination. From the collection Mum and Mr Armitage is the eponymous tale in which two pranksters at a holiday resort play "harmless" jokes on the people and livestock that surround them--until they must pay the price for taking the fun too far. In "The Longstop," unspoken familial information collides with a game of cricket, and in "People for Lunch," two lovers are ironically compelled to ruminate on the dilemmas of adultery. And among the previously uncollected work compiled here are "The Man from Wavertree" and "Poles Apart." The former is a quick look into the eccentric world of Rose and her tenant, Purdy, who is trying to sell his motorbike. The latter tells the story of a popular woman in her late seventies who tells a lie in an attempt to get out of a Christmas party invitation, only to find out her fib has come true. Collected Stories concludes with "Filthy Lucre," a Victorian melodrama that author Beryl Bainbridge wrote when she was only thirteen. In this precocious tale, a dying man asks a friend to take revenge on the family he thinks has cheated him out of his inheritance. What follows is a surprisingly mature and thoroughly sensational tale of murder, deception, love, and treasure islands. Called a "consummate storyteller" by the Sunday Times, Bainbridge was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times in her career, and is perhaps best known for her psychological novels The Bottle Factory Outing and Injury Time. However, her short fiction, hailed by the Times as "impressive," is equally masterful.

''Harriet Said is a highly plotted horror tale that turns the "Obstinate Questionings" of puberty into deadly weapons'' NEW YORK TIMES ''An extremely original and disconcerting story'' DAILY TELEGRAPH ''A sharp, chilling novel . . . The ending has real shock effect'' SUNDAY TIMES A girl returns from boarding school to her sleepy Merseyside hometown and waits to be reunited with her childhood friend, Harriet, chief architect of all their past mischief. She roams listlessly along the shoreline and the woods still pitted with wartime trenches and encounters ''the Tsar'' - almost old, unhappily married, both dangerously fascinating and repulsive. Pretty, malevolent Harriet finally arrives - and over the course of the long holidays draws her friend into a scheme to beguile then humiliate the Tsar, with disastrous, shocking consequences. A gripping portrayal of adolescent transgression, Beryl Bainbridge''s classic first novel remains as subversive today as when it was written.

A darkly humorous fictionalized account of Adolf Hitler’s alleged stay in England as a young man. Before becoming the Führer of the Third Reich, it is said Adolf Hitler was a failed artist who bummed around at his half-brother’s house in Liverpool from 1912 to 1913. Based on the memoir of the future despot’s sister-in-law, Bridget Hitler, Young Adolf is a vivid imagining of this alleged visit to the United Kingdom. The story begins with Adolf aboard a ferry, aiming to avoid Austrian military service. He has no luggage, save for a book, and holds a false passport made out in the name of his dead brother, paranoid that the authorities might be tailing him. But what Adolf should be worried about is how he will be received at his destination. At the train station, his brother Alois greets him with outrage. Alois had sent money for their sister Angela to travel to Liverpool, but Adolf stole the funds. Taking refuge on the sofa for days, Adolf makes only one friend: Jewish landlord Mr. Meyer, surprisingly enough. With mutual interests in opera and architecture, the two become close, though Adolf does mention his thoughts on race relations and “contaminated blood.” Eventually, under pressure, Adolf stops loafing and gets a menial job. Most people think he won’t ever amount to much, but it’s clear that Adolf has bigger aspirations. Originally published in 1978, this was the first foray into historical fiction for award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge, who would become famous for works like Master Georgie and the bestselling Every Man for Himself. Combining dark humor and psychological intrigue, Young Adolf is a portrait of both a man and a city before two World Wars changed everything.

Winner of the Whitbread Literary Award: A darkly humorous tale about a 1970s dinner party gone terribly wrong by one of Britain’s most renowned authors. Edward is normally a cautious man, especially when it comes to his mistress, Binny. But he feels bad that his lover never gets to enjoy the small intimacies of marriage, like sorting his socks or picking out gifts for his family. It is out of this guilt that Edward agrees to throw a dinner party with his “real friends” so Binny can feel more involved in his life and play hostess for a night. But there’s one catch: Edward has to be home no later than eleven to keep his wife from discovering his infidelity. The invitees to the secret soiree are a discreet couple: Simpson, an aspiring adulterer himself, and Muriel, a simultaneously disapproving and open-minded housewife. But as Binny haphazardly prepares the food, shoos her children out for the night, and frets about the aesthetics of her front lawn, the guests take an unintended detour through her run-down neighborhood. Edward, meanwhile, is silently panicking—and drinking. Simpson and Muriel finally arrive, and when everyone sits down to eat, it’s already a quarter past nine. Things get off to a decent, if awkward, start, until there’s a loud knock at the door. It’s Binny’s scandalously drunk old friend, Alma, who proceeds to vomit and pass out. But what should be the end of the evening is only the beginning. More unexpected guests arrive—this time it’s bank robbers with sawed-off shotguns. What follows is a chaotic and hilarious series of events, replete with a fake ping-pong match, a baby carriage full of cash, and a delirious getaway. Edward soon begins to worry less about getting home on time, and more about making it home at all. Equal parts dark comedy and thriller, Injury Time is a witty take on 1970s social mores by one of the most celebrated British authors, Beryl Bainbridge, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author’s estate.

A fictional account of the Antarctic expedition led by Captain Scott in 1912, a tale of misguided courage and human endurance.