W&N Essentials: Classic Books for Modern Readers
By Weidenfeld & Nicolson
W&N Essentials: Classic Books for Modern Readers
By Weidenfeld & Nicolson
W&N Essentials hand-picks titles from the past to create an irresistible reading list for your future. Fiction or nonfiction, cult or classic, each Essential is a literary jewel – a book that has stood the test of time, that was adored by its first readers, that you will find yourself recommending again and again.
Launched in 1949, W&N has been home to some of the 20th century’s most remarkable voices including Vladimir Nabokov, Edna O’Brien, Saul Bellow, Vita Sackville-West, Helen Garner and Alice Walker. The W&N Essentials list will look backwards as well as forwards, bringing new life to the imprint’s most beloved classics and introducing new titles to stand alongside them.
Monkey Grip: The trailblazing, sun-soaked modern classic from one of Australia's greatest writers
Helen Garner
£9.99 £9.49In 1970s Melbourne, Nora is a happy woman. She is happy moving between the city's communal households, with her little daughter. Happy with days spent at the public pool, and nights spent dancing and drinking and talking and smoking and loving freely. But then Nora meets Javo. Javo, with his crooked, wrecked, wild face and his violently blue eyes. And soon she is trapped in the monkey grip of his drug addiction and her own obsessive love for him.
This House of Grief
Helen Garner
£9.99 £9.49Father's Day, 2005. Just after nightfall, a discarded husband drove his three young sons back to their mother, his ex-wife. On that dark country road, barely five minutes from the children's home, the old white car swerved off the highway and plunged into a dam. The father freed himself and swam to the bank, but the car sank to the bottom, and all the children drowned. The court case that followed became Helen Garner's obsession, one that would take over her life until its final verdict. The resulting book is a true-crime classic and literary masterpiece, which examines just what we are capable of and how fiercely we hide it from ourselves.
The Children's Bach
Helen Garner
£9.99 £9.49Athena and Dexter Fox are happy. They love each other. They are friends. They live with their young sons in a sparsely furnished house near the Merri Creek: its walls cracking, its floors sloping and its doors hanging loosely in their frames. There is a piano in their kitchen. But then, one day - years after their lives have taken different directions - Dexter runs into Elizabeth, an old friend from his university days. She brings into his world her loose-living musician boyfriend, Philip, and her seventeen-year-old sister, Vicki. And all at once, the bonds that hold the Fox family together begin to fray.
Another Marvelous Thing
LAURIE COLWIN
£9.99 £9.49A whirlwind love affair, perfectly captured in this frank, funny irresistible novel, from its fabulous inception to its inevitable end.
Family Happiness
LAURIE COLWIN
£9.99 £9.49From Laurie Colwin, the ultimate chronicler of the human heart, comes a novel about a woman tired of being taken for granted - and a reminder that family, like happiness, can take many forms.
Happy All the Time: With an introduction by Katherine Heiny
LAURIE COLWIN
£9.99 £9.49‘A jewel of romantic comedy’ (NEW YORK TIMES), this is a very cheering, very funny, very wise novel about love for readers who adore WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.
Toddler Hunting and Other Stories: With an introduction by Sayaka Murata
Taeko Kono
£8.99 £8.54Dark, disquieting, unforgettable – these stories show women in 20th century Japan like you have never seen them before, casting off traditional roles to follow their wild desires.
In the Cut: With an introduction by Olivia Sudjic
Susanna Moore
£8.99 £8.54A violent, erotic, brilliant novel that W&N reissued in 2019 after 15 years out of print to a rave response.
Eustace and Hilda: With an introduction by Anita Brookner
L. P. Hartley
£12.99 £12.34From the author of THE GO-BETWEEN, a novel which travels from Norfolk beaches to Oxford university, to a Venetian palazzo – for those who love ATONEMENT, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED or HOWARDS END.
Speedboat: With an introduction by Hilton Als
Renata Adler
£9.99 £9.49The definition of a cult classic, SPEEDBOAT is an extremely stylish picture of 1970s America, populated by party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, debutantes, professors and presidents.
Troubles
J.G. Farrell
£10.99 £10.44A ‘work of genius’ (GUARDIAN) and winner of the lost Man Booker Prize 2010, this novel set in a crumbling hotel on Ireland’s west coast is beloved by many including John Banville.
Meridian: With an introduction by Tayari Jones
Alice Walker
£9.99 £9.49From the Pulitzer-prize winning author of THE COLOR PURPLE, a story of a young woman finding her voice – both political and feminist – as she joins the Civil Rights Movement in 1960s American South.
O Caledonia: The beloved classic, for fans of I CAPTURE THE CASTLE and Shirley Jackson, with an introduction by Maggie O’Farrell
Elspeth Barker
£9.99 £9.49A much-beloved, gothic novel about the irresistible, frizzy-haired Janet growing up in a Scottish novel, for readers of I CAPTURE THE CASTLE and Charlotte Brontë.
Two Serious Ladies: With an introduction by Naoise Dolan
Jane Bowles
£9.99 £9.49A true one-off first published in 1943 – daring and original, with deadpan humour and devastating insight – a novel about two women finding freedom through going to pieces.
Please Look After Mother: The million copy Korean bestseller
Kyung-Sook Shin
£9.99 £9.49An intensely moving novel about motherhood and a woman who disappears that has sold over two million copies and won the Man Asian Literary Prize.