The Nice and the Good

Author	Kingsley Amis
ISBN	0140186301

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university...

Author	Peter J. Conradi
ISBN	0393048756

In "Iris Murdoch," Peter Conradi assesses the remarkable intellectual and cultural legacy of the celebrated philosopher and beloved novelist. Depicting her personal life in extraordinary detail -- her student days at Oxford, her Communist activities, her early affairs, and her enduring marriage...

Author	William Trevor
ISBN	0140107487

This is another very quirky book from the 1970 Booker shortlist - another book with comic elements and a dark human story at its centre, which is clearly something the judges that year liked, as both the winner The Elected Member and Eva Trout have similarities.

The setting for this one is O'Neill's...

Author	Muriel Spark
ISBN	0811212467

Spark chooses Rome, "the motherland of sensation," for the setting of her story about movie star Annabel Christopher (known to her adoring fans as "The English Lady-Tiger"), who has made the fatal mistake of believing in her public image. This error and her embittered husband, and unsuccessful actor,...

Author

Elizabeth Taylor

A finely nuanced exploration of responsibility, snobbery and culture clash from one of the twentieth centrury's finest novelists.

When Amy's husband dies on holiday in Istanbul, she is supported by the kindly but rather slovenly Martha, a young American novelist who lives in London. Upon...