Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories

Author	Javier Marías
ISBN	0811218589

A boiled-down gem of a Marías story about how Elvis (in Acapulco to film a movie) and his hard-drinking entourage abandon their interpreter in a seedy cantina full of enraged criminals after insults start to fly. When the local kingpin demands to be told what the Americans are saying, Elvis himself...

Author	Siegfried Sassoon
ISBN	0571202659

Sassoon, who lived through World War One and who died in 1967, was, as the introduction to this book tells us, irritated in his later years at always being thought of as a "war poet". Understandable perhaps from the point of view of the poet: readers on the other hand might wish to demur. The poems gathered...

Author

Shirley Hughes

I had almost forgotten just how good this is. Shirley Hughes manages to tread that fine line between emotionally affecting and twee without ever falling into the cutesy pie.
The story of how Dave loses his beloved Dogger was always a favourite, especially with daughter number one, who had her own...

Author	Vladimir Mayakovsky
ISBN	1438211643

Vladimir Mayakovsky (July 19, 1893 - April 14, 1930) is one of the most recognized and celebrated poets of the Russian canon. One of the leaders of the Russian Futurism movement, which sought to capture the wonder of the fast-paced modern world and renounced the static art of the past, Mayakovsky completely...

Author	Marina Tsvetaeva
ISBN	1438202784

Marina Tsvetaeva (October 8, 1892 - 31 August 31, 1941) is considered by many to be Russia's greatest female poet, rivaled perhaps only by Anna Akhmatova. Tsvetaeva's poetry was often of a very passionate and almost obsessive nature. She writes of unrequited love and heartbreak, of her admiration...