Poet, artist & mystic Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 to a poor Christian family in Lebanon & emigrated to the United States as an adolescent. His masterpiece, The Prophet, a book of poetic essays written in his youth, has sold over eight million copies in more than twenty languages since its first publication in 1923. But all Gibran ...

During the 1970s & the early 1980s Peter Ackroyd wrote countless book reviews & articles for the Spectator, on literature, film & a number of social & cultural issues. The collection offers a selection of these incisive & entertaining pieces, which established Ackroyd's reputation as a writer. Since 1986, Ackroyd has been chief book reviewer for The Times, & in this capacity he has reviewed some of the most important biographies & novels published over the last fifteen years. A selection of his Times reviews are included here. These reviews, & his articles for the Sunday Times display his characteristic attitudes to literature & art. They also throw interesting lights on his own work as a prize-winning novelist & biographer. The Collection also contains a number of Ackroyd's interesting & provocative lectures on ' The Englishness of English literature', ' London Luminaries & Cockney Visionaries' & ' William Black, a Spiritual Radical'. In addition, several essays on subjects such as Ackroyd's own writing & contemporary painters such as Frank Auerbach have been included. Finally, three of Ackroyd's short stories have been reproduced, one of which was his first published work of fiction. The Collection is a revealing & fascinating anthology of Ackroyd's ideas & preoccupations. As such, it is the ideal companion volume to his novels & biographies. With the exception of five pieces, none of the writing contained in this volume has ever been collected: The Collection also contains much previously unpublished material. ...

During the 1970s & the early 1980s Peter Ackroyd wrote countless book reviews & articles for the Spectator, on literature, ...

Withdrawn, uneducated & unloved, Frederick collects butterflies & takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house & calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone & desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices & contempt if she is understand her captor, & so gain her freedom. ...

At the moment that Colonel Browne is standing in the shallow end of the swimming pool of the Hotel Alphenrose, preparing for his later afternoon dip, his daughter Charlotte, carrying a suitcase, is getting out of her car back in Engl&, preparing to rob the ancestral home. It is not just another day: it is the culmination of hundreds of days, hundreds of disappointments & misunderstandings, & thousands of very small lies.... .. . ...

At the moment that Colonel Browne is standing in the shallow end of the swimming pool of the Hotel Alphenrose, preparing for his later afternoon dip, his daughter Charlotte, carrying a suitcase, is getting out of her car back in Engl&, preparing to rob the ancestral home. It is not just another day: it is the culmination of hundreds of days, hundreds of disappointments & misunderstandings, & thousands of very small lies.... .. . ...

' This is a writer whose breadth of imagination & supple prose transcend the genre: she is one of the finest writers in English' Daily Telegraph.

Joseph & Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand in search of new beginnings & prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek he is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm & family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of 'the colour', are violently rushing to their destinies. By turns both moving & terrifying, it is a story of the quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love & in the process discover the sacrifices to be made in the pursuit of happiness.

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Joseph & Harriet Blackstone, along with Joseph's mother Lillian, emigrate from England in search of new beginnings & prosperity in New Zeal&. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek, he guiltily hides the discovery from his wife & mother & is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm & family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of 'the colour', are violently rushing to their destinies. Harriet bravely decides to pursue her own journey towards an uncertain future. But nothing has prepared her for what happens when she too arrives at the gold-diggings. Amid squalor & confusion, amid burning heat & icy flood, she comes face to face with the true cost of desire. Beautifully written, hauntingly evocative & by turns both moving & terrifying, The Colour is the story of a quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love & in the process discover what it is that makes men & women happy. ...