Bøger af Muriel Spark

A Good Comb, a small gift edition of Muriel Spark's brilliant asides, sayings, and aphorisms, is a book for sheer enjoyment. No writer offers such lively, pointed, puckish insights: "Neurotics are awfully quick to notice other people's mentalities." "It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles." "The sacrifice of pleasure is of course itself a pleasure." "It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist." "She wasn't a person to whom things happen." "You look for one thing and you find another." "It calms you down, a good comb."Her scope is great and her striking insights are precise and unforgettable. This book will entertain you? It will even help you live your life. Drink in the pleasures of this little volume along with the benefits of taking up such advice as "Never make excuses but if you must, never make more than one? It gives the appearance of insincerity." And "Beware of men bearing flowers."

The definitive short story collection from an unmistakable voice. Introduced by Janice Galloway

Now available as a stunning Canon'A work of glittering Sparkian ice, whose thinly frozen surface tempts you to jump up and down jovially above something deeper and darker' ALI SMITH

Anarchic, irreverent and razor-sharp, this new collection of Muriel Spark's satires confirms its creator as the mistress of British wit

Travel the continent with this new collection of Muriel Spark's European novels as your guide - an often surprising, occasionally moving, and always unfailingly funny trip

'I am dazzled by The Bachelors. It is the cleverest and most elegant of all Spark's clever and elegant books' Evelyn WaughNow available in print and eBook as a gorgeous canon

With easy, sunny eeriness, Spark lights up the darkest things: blackmail, a drowning, nervous breakdowns, a ring of smugglers, a loathsome busybody, a diabolic bookseller, human evil.

First published in 1993, this book brings together Muriel Spark's writings on the Bronte sisters, including a selection of their letters and a selection of Emily Bronte's poems.

In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone reminds each: Remember you must die. Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled, and many an old unsavory secret is dusted off.

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is a wickedly farcical tale of an English factory town turned upside-down by a Scot who may or may not be in league with the Devil. Dougal Douglas is hired to do "human research" into the lives of the workers, Douglas stirs up mutiny and murder.

First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs, the cozy bachelors (as any Spark reader might guess) are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented - defrauded or stolen from, blackmailed or pressed to attend horrid séances - and then plunged into the nastiest of lawsuits.

A winter's night; a luxurious mansion near Geneva; a lucrative scandal. The first to arrive is the secretary dressed in furs with a bundle of cash, then the Baron, and finally the Baroness. They lock themselves in the library with specific instructions not to be disturbed for any reason. Soon, shouts and screams emerge from the library; the Baron's lunatic brother starts madly howling in the attic; two of the secretary's friends are left waiting in a car; a reverend's services are needed for an impromptu wedding-and despite all that the servants obey their orders as they pass the time playing records, preparing dinner, and documenting false testimonies while a twisted murder plot unfolds upstairs.

Spark's poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark - and light - music beneath the mundane.

Mrs Hawkins, a fat young war widow worked for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher in 1950s London. Looking back on shady literary doings and a deadly enemy, anonymous letters, blackmail and suicide, the thin and successful Mrs Hawkins recalls how she came through it all.

Annabel Christopher is a goddess to her adoring Italian public, her loving husband part of her perfect image. To keep the eager sycophants, ruthless paparazzi and anxious admirers under her spell the image must be carefully cultivated. Only Annabel hasn't calculated on the plans of her husband.

Muriel Sparks's celebrated autobiography with a preface by the poet and biographer Elaine Feinstein.

A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets.

Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance.