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$20.14The Story
Secondhand Literary & Historical Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Books
Another eighteen books worth getting excited about. This collection ranges from a Nobel laureate's South Africa to a Russian poet's wildly entertaining novel, from the Essex marshes to the Australian outback, from post-war Cumbria to a doomed experiment sealed inside a glass dome in the Arizona desert. There are Australian classics sitting alongside Booker-winning voices, a beloved French memoirist, and some of the most reliably entertaining short fiction ever put between covers. Eclectic, surprising, and genuinely good value — this is a box for readers who want range.
1. Lost Children — Maggie Gee A marriage, a family, a country — all showing their cracks at once. Gee writes contemporary Britain with a forensic tenderness, and this novel about love, loss and the things parents can't protect their children from lingers long after the last page.
2. The Soldier's Return — Melvyn Bragg A man comes home from the Second World War to a small Cumbrian town that has quietly moved on without him. Bragg writes about the north of England and the damage done to ordinary people by history with the authority of someone who grew up inside that story.
3. Demi-Gods — Eliza Robertson Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Robertson's debut novel follows a young Canadian girl whose family becomes entangled with two glamorous, unsettling American soldiers one summer. Quietly dangerous and beautifully written — a novel about the way adults cast shadows over children without ever realising it.
4. Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok — Emma Larkin Emma Larkin is best known for her extraordinary non-fiction about Burma, but here she brings that same piercing eye to Bangkok — a city of surfaces, surveillance, and stories that don't quite add up. Atmospheric and strange in the best possible way.
5. The Casting of O'Shaughnessy A Bloomsbury novel about performance, ambition, and the particular madness of putting on a show. For anyone who has ever wondered what it really costs to step into the light.
6. Canvey Island — James Runcie The Essex island, the 1953 floods, a community shaped by disaster and music and stubborn persistence. Runcie (creator of the Grantchester series) writes with warmth and precision about the kind of place and people that rarely make it into literary fiction.
7. The Terranauts — T.C. Boyle Eight people sealed inside a glass-and-steel replica of Earth's ecosystems for two years. Boyle takes the real-life Biosphere 2 experiment and turns it into a savage, funny, deeply human novel about ambition, jealousy, and what happens when idealism meets the reality of sharing a bathroom with the same seven people for 730 days.
8. Don't Die Before Your Death — Yevgeny Yevtushenko The great Soviet-era poet's novel, written in the aftermath of the 1991 coup attempt — part thriller, part memoir, part love letter to a Russia in the process of reinventing itself. Electric, chaotic, and unlike anything else on this list.
9. Get a Life — Nadine Gordimer A Nobel laureate at the height of her powers. A man undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer must return to his parents' home, radioactive and isolated, and rethink everything. Gordimer packs more into 180 pages than most writers manage in 500.
10. In the Land of Oz — Howard Jacobson Before he won the Booker for The Finkler Question, Jacobson drove around Australia and wrote about it with the wit and bewilderment of a man genuinely trying to understand the place. Sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving — essential reading for anyone interested in what this country looks like from the outside.
11. The Collected Short Stories — Jeffrey Archer Whatever you think of Archer, the man can construct a short story. These are lean, twist-laden, compulsively readable — the kind of thing you pick up for ten minutes and put down an hour later. Perfect for planes, waiting rooms, or an afternoon on the couch.
12. The Time of Secrets & The Time of Love — Marcel Pagnol Two volumes of autobiography from the author of Jean de Florette, evoking a childhood in Provence with such warmth and precision that you can almost smell the thyme and the dust. One of the great pleasures of European literature.
13. Season in Purgatory — Thomas Keneally Keneally — Schindler's Ark, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith — at his most gripping, set among the Partisan resistance in wartime Yugoslavia. A young Irish surgeon, an impossible situation, and the moral weight of survival.
14. New England White — Stephen L. Carter A body is found near an elite New England university. The victim has a secret connection to the Deputy Dean and her husband. Carter writes literary thrillers that take race, class, and institutional power seriously — think The Secret History with more to say about America.
15. Across the Endless River — Thad Carhart The extraordinary true story of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau — son of Sacagawea, born on the Lewis and Clark expedition — who was taken to Europe as a young man and moved between courts and cultures for years before returning to the American West. A genuinely remarkable life, beautifully told.
16. Joe Wilson's Mates — Henry Lawson Australian Classics. Lawson's short stories about bush life and the working men and women who built this country remain as vivid and emotionally true as they were when they were written. If you've never read Lawson, start here.
17. Lord of the Mountain — Walter Macken Irish historical fiction at its most powerful. Macken's trilogy of Irish history is among the finest ever written about that country — fierce, heartbroken, and alive with the particular stubbornness of people who refuse to be erased.
18. Lost Memory of Skin — Russell Banks A young man convicted of a sex offence lives under a Florida highway bridge because the law won't allow him to live anywhere else. Banks refuses to look away from the most uncomfortable questions about punishment, redemption, and who society decides to discard. Difficult, brilliant, essential.
Description
Secondhand Literary & Historical Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Books
Another eighteen books worth getting excited about. This collection ranges from a Nobel laureate's South Africa to a Russian poet's wildly entertaining novel, from the Essex marshes to the Australian outback, from post-war Cumbria to a doomed experiment sealed inside a glass dome in the Arizona desert. There are Australian classics sitting alongside Booker-winning voices, a beloved French memoirist, and some of the most reliably entertaining short fiction ever put between covers. Eclectic, surprising, and genuinely good value — this is a box for readers who want range.
1. Lost Children — Maggie Gee A marriage, a family, a country — all showing their cracks at once. Gee writes contemporary Britain with a forensic tenderness, and this novel about love, loss and the things parents can't protect their children from lingers long after the last page.
2. The Soldier's Return — Melvyn Bragg A man comes home from the Second World War to a small Cumbrian town that has quietly moved on without him. Bragg writes about the north of England and the damage done to ordinary people by history with the authority of someone who grew up inside that story.
3. Demi-Gods — Eliza Robertson Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Robertson's debut novel follows a young Canadian girl whose family becomes entangled with two glamorous, unsettling American soldiers one summer. Quietly dangerous and beautifully written — a novel about the way adults cast shadows over children without ever realising it.
4. Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok — Emma Larkin Emma Larkin is best known for her extraordinary non-fiction about Burma, but here she brings that same piercing eye to Bangkok — a city of surfaces, surveillance, and stories that don't quite add up. Atmospheric and strange in the best possible way.
5. The Casting of O'Shaughnessy A Bloomsbury novel about performance, ambition, and the particular madness of putting on a show. For anyone who has ever wondered what it really costs to step into the light.
6. Canvey Island — James Runcie The Essex island, the 1953 floods, a community shaped by disaster and music and stubborn persistence. Runcie (creator of the Grantchester series) writes with warmth and precision about the kind of place and people that rarely make it into literary fiction.
7. The Terranauts — T.C. Boyle Eight people sealed inside a glass-and-steel replica of Earth's ecosystems for two years. Boyle takes the real-life Biosphere 2 experiment and turns it into a savage, funny, deeply human novel about ambition, jealousy, and what happens when idealism meets the reality of sharing a bathroom with the same seven people for 730 days.
8. Don't Die Before Your Death — Yevgeny Yevtushenko The great Soviet-era poet's novel, written in the aftermath of the 1991 coup attempt — part thriller, part memoir, part love letter to a Russia in the process of reinventing itself. Electric, chaotic, and unlike anything else on this list.
9. Get a Life — Nadine Gordimer A Nobel laureate at the height of her powers. A man undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer must return to his parents' home, radioactive and isolated, and rethink everything. Gordimer packs more into 180 pages than most writers manage in 500.
10. In the Land of Oz — Howard Jacobson Before he won the Booker for The Finkler Question, Jacobson drove around Australia and wrote about it with the wit and bewilderment of a man genuinely trying to understand the place. Sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving — essential reading for anyone interested in what this country looks like from the outside.
11. The Collected Short Stories — Jeffrey Archer Whatever you think of Archer, the man can construct a short story. These are lean, twist-laden, compulsively readable — the kind of thing you pick up for ten minutes and put down an hour later. Perfect for planes, waiting rooms, or an afternoon on the couch.
12. The Time of Secrets & The Time of Love — Marcel Pagnol Two volumes of autobiography from the author of Jean de Florette, evoking a childhood in Provence with such warmth and precision that you can almost smell the thyme and the dust. One of the great pleasures of European literature.
13. Season in Purgatory — Thomas Keneally Keneally — Schindler's Ark, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith — at his most gripping, set among the Partisan resistance in wartime Yugoslavia. A young Irish surgeon, an impossible situation, and the moral weight of survival.
14. New England White — Stephen L. Carter A body is found near an elite New England university. The victim has a secret connection to the Deputy Dean and her husband. Carter writes literary thrillers that take race, class, and institutional power seriously — think The Secret History with more to say about America.
15. Across the Endless River — Thad Carhart The extraordinary true story of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau — son of Sacagawea, born on the Lewis and Clark expedition — who was taken to Europe as a young man and moved between courts and cultures for years before returning to the American West. A genuinely remarkable life, beautifully told.
16. Joe Wilson's Mates — Henry Lawson Australian Classics. Lawson's short stories about bush life and the working men and women who built this country remain as vivid and emotionally true as they were when they were written. If you've never read Lawson, start here.
17. Lord of the Mountain — Walter Macken Irish historical fiction at its most powerful. Macken's trilogy of Irish history is among the finest ever written about that country — fierce, heartbroken, and alive with the particular stubbornness of people who refuse to be erased.
18. Lost Memory of Skin — Russell Banks A young man convicted of a sex offence lives under a Florida highway bridge because the law won't allow him to live anywhere else. Banks refuses to look away from the most uncomfortable questions about punishment, redemption, and who society decides to discard. Difficult, brilliant, essential.
