Best Selling Books by D. J. TAYLOR

Chronicles George Orwell''s life-changing service to the British crown in India, the literary world he inhabited, his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, and his works.

A literary tour-de-force ranging from the American frontier to Edwardian England and the decadent carousing of the Bright Young People of London''s jazz age. 1904. A pretty young woman travels apprehensively across the American prairies; on a whim she makes a bold decision, grabbing her future with both hands. A quarter of a century later, in the brightly colored world of London high life, Alice Keach is queen among society hostesses. Her face stares from every gossip column. Behind her lie a marriage to a wealthy landowner and a career as a celebrated actress. But Alice has a secret, whose roots run five thousand miles away to that Kansas train ride, and a chain of connection with the potential to blow her comfortable existence apart. Ranging from the Dakota Badlands to the drawing rooms of Mayfair and the casting couches of the Edwardian theater, Ask Alice is a remarkable novel that confirms D. J. Taylor as a writer of the highest intellect, vision, and imagination.

A screenwriter is about to discover that in life there are no rewrites Martin Benson writes scripts for porn films. He didn’t always aspire to be a screenwriter; he once had dreams of becoming a great journalist. But life has a way of interfering with the best-laid plans. In this darkly captivating novel, Martin shares the story of his past— and a future that is yet to be written. Martin’s search for that elusive thing called happiness takes him back to the Norfolk village of his youth. There, he meets and moves in with schoolteacher Suzi Richards, whose biological clock is ticking. But he is haunted by Elaine Keenan, the gorgeous actress who got away. Then one day the phone rings, sending Martin on a search for his lost love and a final reckoning with the past. Filled with angst and longing, Real Life charts one man’s course back through his own history—a witty, lively account that blurs the line between art and reality, with an ending you will never see coming.

When Henry Ireland dies unexpectedly from what appears to be a riding accident in August 1863, the failed landowner leaves behind little save his high-strung young widow, Isabel—who somehow ends up in the home of Ireland''s friend James Dixey. A celebrated naturalist, Dixey collects strange trophies in his secluded, decaying manse and has questionable associations with rather unsavory characters—including a pair of thuggish poachers named Dewar and Dunbar. Dixey''s precocious, inquisitive young servant, Esther, cannot turn a blind eye to the suspicious activities surrounding her. While in the crime-ridden streets of London, a determined captain of Scotland Yard follows the threads that may well link a daring train robbery to the disappearance of a disturbed heiress as well as to the possible murder of Henry Ireland. D. J. Taylor''s Kept is a gorgeously intricate, dazzling reinvention of Victorian life and passions that is also a riveting investigation into some of the darkest, most secret chambers of the human heart.

A rich and evocative portrait of one of the greatest authors of Victorian England Who was William Makepeace Thackeray? Was he the wealthy dilettante who came to London in the 1830s and squandered his fortune on newspapers? Was he the impoverished freelance author of the 1840s who scrapped for every penny he could get? Or was he the great writer who published Vanity Fair in 1847, skewering Victorian society and ensuring his literary legacy? Throughout the many phases of his life, Thackeray remained an enigma. He was friendly but standoffish, generous yet miserly, confident and utterly terrified of failure. A century and a half after Thackeray''s death, D. J. Taylor has produced a biography that tackles the complexities of these contradictions and restores Thackeray to his place in the literary pantheon. His fortune lost by the time he was thirty, his personal life in constant torment, Thackeray''s story is as dramatic as that of any of his characters. In Thackeray, the man can finally be seen in full.

The Booker Prize–nominated author of Derby Day delivers a sumptuous cultural history as seen through the lives of four enigmatic women. Who were the Lost Girls? Chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton, and Janetta Parlade cut a swath through English literary and artistic life at the height of World War II. Three of them had affairs with Lucian Freud. One of them married George Orwell. Another became the mistress of the King of Egypt. They had very different—and sometimes explosive—personalities, but taken together they form a distinctive part of the wartime demographic: bright, beautiful, independent-minded women with tough upbringings who were determined to make the most of their lives in a chaotic time. Ranging from Bloomsbury and Soho to Cairo and the couture studios of Schiaparelli and Hartnell, the Lost Girls would inspire the work of George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, and Nancy Mitford. They are the missing link between the Lost Generation and Bright Young People and the Dionysiac cultural revolution of the 1960s. Sweeping, passionate, and unexpectedly poignant, this is their untold story.

Three fictional journeys in search of the place one came from, and the bitter discoveries that lie in wait.In Real Life, a veteran of the Soho skin trade returns to his native Norwich, only to find that the past has followed him home.In Trespass, the former henchman of a disgraced City tycoon sits in an East coast hotel slowly unravelling the truth about the fractures of his early life.In The Comedy Man, the surviving half of a once-famous comedy duo tries to come to terms with the unfinished business of his career.These three novels were originally published in 1992, 1998 and 2001. Menacing and humorous by turns, each is an intensely imaginative exploration of the difficulties of going back to the places and people who made us what we are. They confirm D. J. Taylor as one of the best writers of his generation.