Rebecca West

Set during World War I on an isolated country estate just outside London, Rebecca West's haunting novel The Return of the Soldier follows Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, as he makes a bittersweet homecoming to the three women who have helped shape his life. Will the devoted wife he can no longer recollect, the favorite cousin he remembers only as a childhood friend, and the poor innkeeper's daughter he once courted leave Chris to languish in a safe, dreamy past--or will they help him recover his memory so that he can return to the front? The answer is revealed through a heartwrenching, unexpected sacrifice. The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the first American edition, published in 1918, and features original illustrations by Norman Price.

Here is an extraordinary collection of the world's best literary espionage, selected by Alan Furst, a contemporary master of the genre. The Book of Spies brings us the aristocratic intrigues of The Scarlet Pimpernel, in which French emigres duel with Robespierre's secret service; the savage political realities of the 1930s in Eric Ambler's classic A Coffin for Dimitrios; the ordinary (well, almost) citizens of John le Carre's The Russia House, who are drawn into Cold War spy games; and the 1950s Vietnam of Graham Greene's The Quiet American, with its portrait of American idealism "and duplicity. Drawing on acknowledged classics and rediscovered treasures, A Book of Spies delivers literate entertainment and excitement on every page.

The author re-imagines her own childhood in this witty, often troubling autobiographical novel that follows the lives of members of the Aubrey family from the perspective of Rose, one of four siblings. Original.

Like most all of Rebecca West's reportage, A Train of Powder approaches great literature. Written between 1946 and 1954, these accounts of four controversial trials explore the nature of crime and punishment, innocence and guilt, retribution and forgiveness. The centerpiece of the book is "Greenhouse with Cyclamens," a three-part essay on the Nuremberg trials written with precision, clarity, and daring insight. She also reports on two particularly brutal murder trials — one for a lynching in North Carolina, the other for a "torso murder" in England — and the espionage trial of a British telegrapher. Throughout, the question of guilt inspires Ms. West to feats of psychological detection wherein unerring craftsmanship and a powerful narrative sense combine to a high purpose — the pursuit of truth. "An astonishing book.... As compelling as Court TV but without the frisson of voyeurism (and with the compensatory satisfactions of West's breathtakingly lucid prose style), these elegant narratives remind us of the preciousness and fragility of our right to trial by jury."—Francine Prose. "It is her unique magic to combine impressionism and precision, as if Monet and Ingres could somehow be fused. Time and again a passage begins as a sort of iridescent cloud, and culminates in a diamond point."—Telford Taylor, Saturday Review. "Rebecca West...has raised journalism to a high art, breathing into it a depth, a poetry, a subtlety, and an understanding and compassion for human beings and their endless follies and tragedies that give it a legitimate place in contemporary literature."—William L. Shirer.

A volume of Rebecca West's short fiction. Including the novella "The Only Poet", found amongst her papers after her death, this selection comprises unpublished work and published stories gathered from British and American journals and periodicals.

* Rich in period detail, lyrical in its evocation of the Thames, a novel that reveals both the problems of marriage and the ecstasies of sexual love

*A powerful exposition of the strange necessity of artistic endeavour -- and its limitations, the struggle of light against darkness, good against evil, played out against the coming of the First World War

'The Strange Necessity',one of the twelve essays collected here and first published in 1928, anchors West's quest to understand why art matters and how aesthetics of every caliber can not only inspire but reveal the author's inner world. Whether juxtaposing Ulysses's prose with Pavlov's research, or comparing Sinclair Lewis with actress and pianist Yvonne Printemps, West finds that a satisfying emotion overrides an artistic work's form. Her intricately crafted essays reveal her experience in the literary circles of the twenties and thirties and the important role this question played in her own writing. West's keenly observed criticism offers invaluable insight not only into her work but into her impressions of early twentieth century literature.

One afternoon, in an early summer of this century, eighteen-year-old Laura Rowan sits on the garden steps of her house embroidering a handkerchief. She overhears a conversation between her father, an English Member of Parliament, and her mother, Tania, the daughter of an exiled Russian royalist. Tania's decision to take Laura to Paris to visit her grandfather, Count Nikilai Diakonov, means that Laura will unwittingly become a witness to the momentous events leading up to the Russian Revolution... Through a vivid canvas layered with intrigue, conspiracy and murder, Rebecca West has created a story that is at once a family saga, a political thriller, a philosophical drama and an historical novel.

Isabelle is beautiful, immensely rich and a widow at the age of twenty-six. In 1928 she leaves America for Cannes and Paris in search of high society - and love. For though outwardly she has everything women dream of, inside she craves the peace of a lasting marriage. To find the kind of love she needs Isabelle must choose between three men: her violent, fascinating lover, the aristocrat Andre de Verviers; a reserved plantation owner from the Deep South, Laurence Vernon; and the eccentric millionaire Marc Sellafranque... First published in 1936, this is Rebecca West's most popular work of fiction: at once a masterful portrayal of the brilliance and decadence of high society in the 1920s, and a poignant and compassionate portrait of one woman's life and loves.