New Releases by J. G. Ballard

"This fable lifts a great freight of ideas effortlessly…The story of an expedition driven on by wishes of possession and power but guided internally by myths of America whose sources lie in the late 20th century." —Guardian Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth century, America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the now climatically mutated continent. But America is unrecognizable—the Bering Strait has been dammed and much of the country has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-country journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks, to uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas.

The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg’s film, tells of a young boy’s struggle to survive World War II in China. Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him. Shanghai, 1941—a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world. Ballard’s enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists win control over a small atoll in the Pacific and sets up a utopian community. Breeding other threatened species and among themselves, these homesteaders slowly transform an Eden of their very own into a much darker place.

A final statement from the greatest clairvoyant of twentieth-century literature. Never before published in America, this revelatory autobiography—hailed as “fascinating [and] amazingly lucid” (Guardian)—charts the remarkable story of James Graham Ballard, a man described by Martin Amis as “the most original English writer of the last century.” Beginning with his Shanghai childhood, Miracles of Life guides us from the deprivations of Lunghua Camp during World War II, which provide the back story for his best-selling Empire of the Sun, to his arrival in war-torn England and his emergence as “the ideal chronicler of our disturbed modernity” (Observer). With prose of characteristic precision, Ballard movingly recalls his first attempts at science fiction, the 1970 American pulping of The Atrocity Exhibition—which sprang from his fascination with JFK conspiracy theories—and his life as a single father after the premature death of his wife. “This book should make yet more converts to a cause that Ballard’s devotees have been pleading for years” (Independent).

A startling and at times unsettlingly prescient collection of J.G. Ballard’s greatest interviews.

First in a two volume collection of short stories by the acclaimed author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.

Class war erupts in a luxurious high-rise apartment building.

Collects all ninety-two of the late author''s stories -- including "Prima Belladonna," "Dead Time," and "The Index" -- which span five decades and explore everything from musical orchids to human cannibalism to the secret history of World War III.

From the iconic author of Crash and Empire of the Sun, Cocaine Nights features a man who finds himself drawn into a network of drugs, pornography, and murder in a Spanish resort. The remarkable bestseller from one of the giants of modern British literature--at once an engrossing mystery and an unnerving vision of a society coming to terms with a life of unlimited leisure. When Charles Prentice arrives in Spain to investigate his brother''s involvement in the death of five people in a fire in the upmarket coastal resort of Estrella de Mar, he gradually discovers that beneath the civilised, cultured surface of this exclusive enclave for Britain''s retired rich there flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex . What starts as an engrossing mystery develops into a mesmerising novel of ideas--a dazzling work of the imagination from one of Britain''s most original and controversial novelists.

The author of Empire of the Sun charts the course of his life from his early childhood in Shanghai, internment in a WWII prison camp, his early attempts at fiction while stationed in Canada and his life as a single father in Britain after the premature death of his wife.

In this hallucinatory novel, an automobile provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an internationally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor. A classic work of cutting-edge fiction, Crash explores both the disturbing implications and horrific possibilities of contemporary society''s increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.

Paul and his wife Jane move to France so that she can take up a post as doctor to the new community of Eden-Olympia. According to its resident psychologist, the community is a place where one is absolutely free to "board the escalator of possibility". And, Jane does just that.

The stories in this collection explore the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology.

The "Cape Canaveral" stories, eight stories originally published between 1962 and 1985.

This new novel, by the author of Empire Of The Sun, centers around Dr. Mallory, who dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom.

Controversial science fiction writer, J.G. Ballard, tells of his unorthodox upbringing in Shanghai in the 1940''s. Ballard has achieved acclaim for works such as Empire of the Sun, and controversy over Crash, which investigates the psychosexual significance of the car crash. The book includes an article on Ballard Mythmaker of the 20th Century by William S. Burroughs, and chapter one of Crash, plus Ballard''s introduction to the French edition.

From one of the most powerful and original talents in science fiction comes the story of a new world--a strange world where solar radiation fluctuations have melted the polar ice caps, flooding the land and raising the temperature of the atmosphere.

When Robert Maitland''s car crashes over a concrete parapet onto the island below, he finds himself trapped in a bizarre world that seems to mirror his own mind.