Jonathan Coe

What I want you to have, Imogen, above all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of where you come from, and of the forces that made you.'Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family - and of what goes to make a child. Called "the best English novelist of his generation" by Nick Hornby, Jonathan Coe extends his range in this magnificent account of a Shropshire family in the last half of the twentieth century.

Offers a portrait of the private life of the beloved American film star, following Stewart from his small-town Pennsylvania youth, to the heights of Hollywood stardom, to his distinguished military service, and his family life.

Set against the backdrop of the Millenium celebrations and Britain's increasingly compromised role in America's 'war against terrorism', The Closed Circle lifts the lid on an era in which politics and presentation, ideology and the media have become virtually indistinguishable. Darkly comic, hugely engaging, and compulsively readable, it is the much-anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Coe's bestselling novel The Rotters' Club, and reintroduces us to the characters first encountered in that book. But whereas The Rotters' Club was a novel of innocence, The Closed Circle is its opposite: a novel of experience.

"In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known young novelists in Britain. A passionate advocate for the avante-garde in both literature and film, he became famous - not to say notorious - both for his forthright views on the future of the novel and for his idiosyncratic ways of putting them into practice. His innovations included a book with holes cut through the pages and a novel published in a box so that its unbound chapters could be read in any order." "But in November 1973, Johnson's lifelong struggle with depression got the better of him, and he was found dead at his north London home. He had taken his own life at the age of forty." "Since then, a kind of myth has grown up around the figure of B. S. Johnson, whose personality was as large and energetic as that one of his hero (and namesake), Samuel." "Jonathan Coe's long-awaited biography is based upon unique access to the vast collection of papers Johnson left behind after his death, and upon dozens of interviews with those who knew him best. Coe's words paint a remarkable picture - vivid, sometimes funny, often overwhelmingly sad - of a tortured personality: a man whose writing, in spite of its fierce commitment to truth and honesty, tragically failed to keep at bay the demons that pursued him."--BOOK JACKET.

Jonathan Coe's widely acclaimed novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics - the collapse of 'Old Labour' - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb.

Music, murder... and MadeleineWilliam has a lot on his mind. Firstly there's The Alaska Factory, the band he plays in. They're no good and they make his songs sound about as groovy as an unpressed record. In fact they're so bad he's seriously thinking of leaving to join a group called The Unfortunates.Secondly, there's Madeleine, his high-maintenance girlfriend whose idea of a night of passion is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical followed by a doorstep peck on the cheek. Maybe they're not soulmates after all?Lastly, there's the bizarre murder he's just witnessed. The guiding force behind The Unfortunates lies bludgeoned to death at his feet and, unfortunately for William, there aren't too many other suspects standing nearby...

Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has had his life changed for ever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated .A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart. Yet a decade later they are drawn back together by a series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep - and each other...

A brilliant noir farce, a dystopian vision of Britain, a family history and the story of an obsession. Michael is a lonely, rather pathetic writer, obsessed by the film, 'What A Carve Up!' in which a mad kinfeman cuts his way through the inhabitants of a decrepit stately pile as the thunder rages. Inexplicably he is commissioned to write the family history of the Winshaws, an upper class Yorkshire clan whose members have a finger in every establishment pie, from arms dealing to art dealing, from politics to banking to the popular press and factory farming. During his researches Michael realizes that the Winshaws have cast a blight on his life, as they have on Britain. His confidence, his sexual and personal identity begin to reform. In a climax set in the Winshaw's family seat the novel turns into the film, 'What A Carve Up!' as a murderous maniac stalks the family and Michael discovers the significance of Shirley Eaton's lingere.

Undercovered as governess in order to stay with her nephew and nieces after the death of their parents in a boating accident, Tamara started to work to their new guardian, the Duke of Granchester. The Duke's arms went around her and before Tamara realized what was happening his lips were on hers. For a moment she was still in surprise, then she felt a sudden rapture so wonderful that she knew this was what she had been seeking. "Oh my darling," the Duke said hoarsely. "I love you." "I... love you!" she whispered. Then, even as she spoke she remembered the unforgettable things she had written about him before she had come to love him. An icy hand gripped her heart as she tore herself from his embrace and raced suddenly to her room.

For Maria, nothing is certain. Her life is a chain of accidents. Friendship passes her by, and she's unimpressed by the devoted Ronny and his endless propsals of marriage. Maria lives in a world of her own - yet not of her own making. Stumbling through university, work, marriage and motherhood, she finds it hard to see what all the fuss is about.Will she ever be able to control the direction of her life? Or will it end, as it began, by accident? What does chance have in store for the accidental woman?

"Jonathan Coe finally provides a sequel to The Winshaw Legacy, the 1995 novel that introduced American readers to one of Britain's most exciting new writers -- an acerbic, hilariously dark, and unflinching portrait of modern society. In Number 11, Coe has filled his intricate plot with a truly Dickensian cast of characters. The novel opens in the early aughts with two ten-year-old girls, Alison and Rachel, and their frightening encounter with the "Mad Bird Woman," a mysterious figure who lives down the road. As the narrative progresses through time, the novel broadens in scope toward other people who are somehow connected to the two girls. We follow the trials and tribulations of Alison's mother, a has-been singer, as she competes on TV's reality hit I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! Rachel's university mentor confronts her late husband's disastrously obsessive search for an untraceable German film he saw as a child. A young police constable investigates the seemingly accidental and unrelated deaths of two stand-up comedians. And when Rachel becomes a nanny for ludicrously wealthy family, she discovers a dark and terrifying secret lying beneath their immense mansion in London's most staggeringly expensive neighborhood. Combining psychological insight, social commentary, vicious satire, and even surrealist horror, this highly accomplished work holds a revealing and disquieting mirror up to the world we live in today"--

Maxwell Sim seems to have hit rock bottom. Estranged from his father, newly divorced, unable to communicate with his only daughter, he realizes that while he may have seventy-four friends on Facebook, there is nobody in the world with whom he can actually share his problems. Then a business proposition comes his way - a strange exercise in corporate PR that will require him to spend a week driving from London to a remote retail outlet on the Shetland Isles. Setting out with an open mind, good intentions and a friendly voice on his SatNav for company, Maxwell finds that this journey soon takes a more serious turn, and carries him not only to the furthest point of the United Kingdom, but into some of the deepest and darkest corners of his own past. In his sparkling and hugely enjoyable new book Jonathan Coe reinvents the picaresque novel for our time.

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