<p>'Our young eponymous heroine, Zepherine Pollack has always considered it her destiny to be a writer, and in the first sentence of the book announces her intention to become ''the unintelligent woman's Iris Murdoch''. ''Inspiration'', she decides, ''is divine intervention and I've been chosen to be intervened''.' Sunday Times\n'Barker depicts Zeph's literary pretensions and plagiarism in a dazzling collage of pastiche and self-mockery, parodying a range of English literary styles from Tennyson to Booker-derived poetic-prose posturing. But it is her own gift for word-play, nuance and subtle exposition of the unstated that gives the novel its unique texture.' Times Literary Supplement</p>

ZEPH

Literature & Fiction

BARKER, A.L.

Contemporary

RANDOM HOUSE UK

Any Excuse for a Party

Hutchinson

A.L. Barker Omnibus

Zeph

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

The Gooseboy

Arena

Chemistry - a Practical Approach

Science & Math

Knapp, K. A.

Chemistry

Nelson Thornes (Publishers) Ltd

Jamie and The Lion's Gate: The First Key

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

A. L. Barker's 1964 collection of short stories casts a glint of the most revealing light on the characters within - and makes them more real than the everyday people we meet.   So it is with the decaying actress Delie Rivers, 'vulgar in an eighteen carat way'; Caffery, the farmer turned businessman, who thinks his son 'about as vibrant as raw pastry'; Mrs Eagle, 'her wonderful lassitude', and 'her pale, lumpy legs like porridge'; Mrs Airey who is 'about as deep as an egg-spoon'.   Barker's imagination is acutely discerning as well as descriptive: the chief accountant who has retired after forty years of office routine; the wife who is not married to a dominating man, but who would like to be; the self-contained spinster career woman: what deceptions do they practise to conceal from themselves and others the fact that somehow they have been lost upon the roundabouts?

Lost Upon the Roundabouts

Faber and Faber

'It is an extraordinary achievement.' A. S. Byatt  Marise Tomelty is a child-wife who dislikes sex and is terrified of open spaces. Ralph Shilling, a dealer in pesticides, lives in the flat above the Tomeltys'. One day, Marise's travelling-salesman husband casually mentions that he recognises Ralph as John Brown, the suspect who, for lack of evidence, was acquitted in an atrocious double murder. Nevertheless, Marise encourages Ralph's attentions, intoxicated by a heady mix of passion and fear.   Shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize, John Brown's Body is a serious exploration of the tug between body and soul, life and death, truth and fantasy. An extraordinary novel, it is written in the precise, impeccable prose for which A. L. Barker is famed.  'She is formidable, and from a bare corner of human relations gathers a rich harvest.' Adam Mars-Jones  'Her glancing, allusive writing carries one along easily, darting from invention to invention . . . Underneath there is a firm, ordering imagination and the poise of perfect pitch.' New Statesman  'It would be hard to find anyone who chooses words more exactly or constructs with more precision.' Penelope Fitzgerald

John Brown's Body

A Heavy Feather

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