New Releases by William Trevor

Wealthy widow Norah Oâe(tm)Neill wonders if she will ever marry again. When her son decides to close the familyâe(tm)s failing toy factory, the manager, a decent man who dances the quickstep beautifully, becomes unemployed. Suddenly, Norah sees her chance for happiness, in a new venture of her own. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to loveâe(tm)s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional loveâe¦

Penguin Classics is proud to welcome William Trevor—"Ireland’s answer to Chekhov" (The Boston Globe) and "one of the best writers of our era" (The Washington Post)—to our distinguished list of literary masters. In this award-winning novel, an informer’s body is found on the estate of a wealthy Irish family shortly after the First World War, and an appalling cycle of revenge is set in motion. Led by a zealous sergeant, the Black and Tans set fire to the family home, and only young Willie and his mother escape alive. Fatherless, Willie grows into manhood while his alcoholic mother’s bitter resentment festers. And though he finds love, Willie is unable to leave the terrible injuries of the past behind. First time in Penguin Classics Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award

A Bit on the Side - Twelve remarkable stories by the master storyteller William Trevor ''Compassionate, poignant, even heart-rending. Almost perfect works of art by perhaps the greatest short story writer now working in English'' Sunday Independent William Trevor is truly a Chekhov for our age. In these twelve stories, a waiter divulges a shocking life of crime to his ex-wife; a woman repeats the story of her parents'' unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy; a schoolgirl regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man who tutors her; and, in the volume''s title story, a middle-aged accountant offers his reasons for ending a love affair. At the heart of this stunning collection is Trevor''s characteristic tenderness and unflinching eye for both the humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and rural life. If you enjoyed The Story of Lucy Gault and Love and Summer, you will love this book. It will also be adored by readers of Colm Toibin, George Saunders and James Joyce. ''A treat ... each meditate[s] on the subject of love - adulterous, unspoken, clandestine, sometimes cruel. Whether set in rural Ireland or London, their pages whisper of relished secrets and dreams foolishly clung to'' Mail on Sunday William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime''s literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. His books in Penguin are: After Rain; A Bit on the Side; Bodily Secrets; Cheating at Canasta; The Children of Dynmouth; The Collected Stories (Volumes One and Two); Death in Summer; Felicia''s Journey; Fools of Fortune; The Hill Bachelors; Love and Summer; The Mark-2 Wife; Selected Stories; The Story of Lucy Gault and Two Lives.

In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company''s 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane''s vision of good books for all''. selected by the author. It includes the title story, never before published in the UK, and two stories from the award-winning collections After Rain and The Hill Bachelors.

Two Lives: Reading Turgenev & My House in Umbria - two novels by William Trevor ''Evocative and haunting. Trevor writes like an angel, but is determined to wring your heart'' Daily Mail ''Marvellous, superb. As rich and moving as anything I have read in years. When I reach the end . . . I wanted to start right again at the beginning'' Guardian In Reading Turgenev an Irish country girl is trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man, but finds release through secret meetings with a man who shares her passion for Russian novels. My House in Umbria tells of Emily Delahunty, a writer of romantic novels, who helps the survivors of a bomb attack on a train to convalesce, inventing colourful pasts for her patients. Two novels, two women who retreat further into the realm of the imagination until the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred . . . ''One of the most beautiful and memorable things Trevor has written'' Independent on Sunday Reading Turgenev was shortlisted for the Booker Prize Readers of Love and Summer and Felicia''s Journey will adore Two Lives. It will also be cherished by readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd. William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime''s literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. His books in Penguin are: After Rain; A Bit on the Side; Bodily Secrets; Cheating at Canasta; The Children of Dynmouth; The Collected Stories (Volumes One and Two); Death in Summer; Felicia''s Journey; Fools of Fortune; The Hill Bachelors; Love and Summer; The Mark-2 Wife; Selected Stories; The Story of Lucy Gault and Two Lives.

Novela finalista del Premio Booker en 2002, La historia de Lucy Gault es la última obra publicada por William Trevor, considerado uno de los mejores narradores irlandeses vivos. Fascinado por el influjo que la Historia ejerce en el destino de los individuos, Trevor ha dado voz a las víctimas y los marginados, procurando reflejar los mundos alternativos en que estas personas se recluyen para protegerse de una realidad que se niega a satisfacer sus deseos más íntimos. Ese universo de aislamiento personal, en el contexto de una comunidad que se desintegra, es el distintivo de un autor al que se ha comparado nada menos que con su compatriota James Joyce. En el condado de Cork, en la costa sureste de Irlanda, el capitán Gault, su esposa Heloise y su hija Lucy, de nueve años, sufren el rechazo de sus vecinos por su supuesta simpatía con el enemigo inglés. Ante la creciente animadversión local, los Gault deciden marcharse a Inglaterra, pero poco antes de su partida la pequeña Lucy desaparece, y los únicos rastros hallados parecen indicar que la niña se ha ahogado. Abrumados por el dolor, los Gault inician un largo peregrinaje por media Europa con el firme propósito de cortar los lazos con la tierra donde se fraguó su desgracia, ignorantes de que están dando pie a una tragedia humana aún mayor, que convertirá a Lucy en una leyenda entre los habitantes de la zona.

A New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book From the winner of the 1999 David Cohen British Literature Prize comes an unforgettably chilling novel, written with the compassion and artistry that define Trevor''s fiction. There were three deaths that summer. The first was Letitia’s, sudden and quite unexpected, leaving her husband, Thaddeus, haunted by the details of her last afternoon. The next death came some weeks later, after Thaddeus’s mother-in-law helped him to interview for a nanny to bring up their baby. None of the applicants were suitable—least of all the last one, with her sharp features, her shabby clothes that reeked of cigarettes, her badly typed references—so Letitia’s mother moved herself in. But then, just as the household was beginning to settle down, the last of the nannies surprisingly returned, her unwelcome arrival heralding the third of the summer tragedies. “William Trevor is an extraordinarily mellifluous writer, seemingly incapable of composing an ungraceful sentence. . . . His skill is very real, and equals his great compassion. With Death in Summer, these two qualities combine in a beautiful and resonant way.”—The New York Time Book Review “Possibly the most perfect of Trevor’s novels . . . Astonishing.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Beautifully paced and mesmerizing . . . Offering us a compelling mystery on many levels through . . . finely drawn, perfect glimpses of touchingly imperfect lives.”—The Washington Post Book World Nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A collection of short stories from celebrated author William Trevor in which he shines a light on the day-to-day life of Ireland and its citizens. From his debut collection, “The Day We Got Drunk on Cake,” published in 1968, to “Family Sins” (1990), William Trevor has crafted the short story to perfection, giving us brilliant and subtle stories full of the reversals, surprises, and shadowy truths we discover in life itself. To read this volume is not just to encounter an extraordinary literary stylist, but to understand life as surely as though we were looking through the eyes of his protagonists and—deeper still—into their hearts. William Trevor: The Collected Stories includes the tales from his seven previous books, as well as four stories that have never appeared in book form in America. They depict the comforts and frustrations of life in rural Ireland, the complexities of family relationships, and the elusive grace of love. They portray the almost invisible strands that bind people to each other as well as the chains that imprison them in solitary yearning.

These autobiographical tales are about people and places, personal fascinations and enthusiasms, that have remained snagged in William Trevor''s memory over the years. He writes here of childhood and youth, of his schools and university days, his early life in Dublin and London, o Ireland and of England. Most of the portraits are of people who have either been well known to him or casually met/ a few are drawn from the imagination, though the subjects are real. Some of the landscapes are equally familiar to him, while others are merely glimpsed: Persia in the early seventies, a Swiss valley, Country cork in the thirties, a Gloucestershire village, Venice in November, New York and San Francisco. "Places do not die as people do," William Trevor writes in his introduction, "but they often changed so fundamentally that little is left of what once they were. The landscape of the Nire valley that spreads over a northern part of Country Waterford is timeless, but the Dublin remembered here is the Dublin of several pasts, and elsewhere among these impressions there is that same dichotomy." Affectionate, poignant and often gently humorous, these essays are an expansion of a writer''s notebook. Such excursions into memory convey the essence of William Trevor''s world - read in conjunction with Lucy Willis''s graceful illustrations, they illuminate unforgettably the background to this celebrated novels and short stories.

"Three ... stories that were read to the audiences of The Daily Telegraph Cheltenham Festival of Literature in 1991, 1992, and 1993 respectively."--Back cover

A young Irish girl overcomes the death of a beloved storyteller with the help of her grandmother who takes her on a trip.

Theme of survival in adverse circumstances - shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize; novel is also included in the special double edition T̀wo lives : reading Turgenev, and My house in Umbria''.

Contains twelve short stories on the complexities of humanity.

This literary tour of Ireland encompasses anonymous sagas of Celtic origin, the modern work of Joyce, Yeats, Synge, and O''Connor and much in between

A small, pretty seaside town is harshly exposed by a young boy''s curiosity. His prudent interest, oddly motivated, leaves few people unaffected - and the consequences cannot be ignored.

THESE TWELVE SHORT STORIES DEAL WITH ORDINARY PEOPLE IN EXTRAORDINARY SITUATIONS.