Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased – as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart – and come together – as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon’s unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness – literally – of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon’s crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.

An dazzlingly inventive novel about modern family, from the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-timeThe set-up of Mark Haddon's brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. The stage is set for seven days of resentment and guilt, a staple of family gatherings the world over.But because of Haddon's extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt. As we come to know each character they become profoundly real to us. We understand them, even as we come to realize they will never fully understand each other, which is the tragicomedy of every family.The Red House is a literary tour-de-force that illuminates the puzzle of family in a profoundly empathetic manner -- a novel sure to entrance the millions of readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

‘I really am so very, very sorry about this,’ he says, in an oddly formal voice… They strike the side of a grain silo. They are travelling at seventy miles per hour.A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash.She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the rumours about a beautiful young woman, hidden from the world.When a suitor visits, he understands far more than he should. Forced to run for his life, he escapes aboard The Porpoise, an assassin on his tail…So begins a wild adventure of a novel, damp with salt spray, blood and tears. A novel that leaps from the modern era to ancient times; a novel that soars, and sails, and burns long and bright; a novel that almost drowns in grief yet swims ashore; in which pirates rampage, a princess wins a wrestler’s hand, and ghost women with lampreys’ teeth drag a man to hell – and in which the members of a shattered family, adrift in a violent world, journey towards a place called home.

Jim and his best friend Charlie bug the staff room, and overhear two teachers speak in a strange language. What does "spudvetch" mean? Why do Mr Kidd's eyes flicker with fluorescent blue light when Charlie says spudvetch to him? A high-powered adventure can end only with a Boom!

Mark Haddon, author of the international bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother, returns with a collection of unsparing short storiesIn the prize-winning story "The Gun," a man's life is marked by a single afternoon and a rusty .45; in "The Island," a mythical princess is abandoned on an island in the midst of war; in "The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear," a cadre of sheltered artistocrats sets out to find adventure in a foreign land and finds the gravest dangers among themselves. These are but some of the men and women who fill this searingly imaginative and emotionally taut collection of short stories by Mark Haddon, that weaves through time and space to showcase the author's incredible versatility. Yet the collection achieves a sum that is greater than its parts, proving itself a meditation not only on isolation and loneliness but also on the tenuous and unseen connections that link individuals to each other, often despite themselves. In its titular story, the narrator describes with fluid precision a catastrophe that will collectively define its victims as much as it will disperse them—and brilliantly lays bare the reader's appetite for spectacle alongside its characters'. Cut with lean prose and drawing inventively from history, myth, fairy tales, and, above all, the deep well of empathy that made his three novels so compelling, The Pier Falls reveals a previously unseen side of the celebrated author.

From the "terrifyingly talented" (The Times, UK) author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Porpoise, eight mesmerizingly imaginative, deeply-humane stories that use Greek myths and contemporary dystopian narratives to examine mortality, moral choices and the many variants of loveGreek myths have fascinated people for millennia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew.In "The Quiet Limit of the World" Haddon imagines Tithonus' life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In "The Mother’s Story," Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king's wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In "D.O.G.Z." the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior.Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism—to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon's tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds—all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout Haddon's supple prose, he showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic.

From the phenomenally bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time comes Mark Haddon’s first collection of poems.That Mark Haddon’s first book after The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a book of poetry may surprise his many fans; that it is also one of such virtuosity and range will not.The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea reveals a poet of great versatility and formal talent. All the gifts so admired in Haddon’s prose are in strong evidence here – the humanity, the dark humour, and the uncanny ventriloquism – but Haddon is also a writer of considerable seriousness, lyric power, and surreal invention. This book will consolidate his reputation as one of the most imaginative writers in contemporary literature.

Leading up to the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, the excitement of this momentous event is captured through the eyes of a child in this glorious picture book, reformatted with a new cover design. Mark Haddon is the prize-winning, highly-acclaimed author of the best-selling novel 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time'. Years ago there was a little boy who dreamed of rocketing to the moon, of landing on the crumbly rock and walking across the Sea of Tranquility. He borrowed library books and read how astronauts had orbited the earth and walked in space. And every night he hoped that they would find a way to land on the moon and walk where he had dreamed of walking. And eventually, one cloudless night, they did!

Selected from the books of Mark Haddon.VINTAGE GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is the world's richest and most prestigious prize for a short story, with £30,000 going to the winner.This special ebook contains, exclusively and in full, all six shortlisted stories competing for the 2013 award, written by some of the best names in modern fiction - American Pulitzer prize-winner Junot Díaz, Man Booker shortlisted novelists Sarah Hall and Ali Smith, Betty Trask-winner Cynan Jones, Granta Best of Young British novelist Toby Litt, and Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.Containing some strong language and graphic imagery, these challenging, varied and powerful stories show just how compelling short-form fiction can be.

Polar Bears is a captivating tale by awardwinning writer Mark Haddon. Balancing humour and pathos, it tells of one man's struggle to love, support and live with someone suffering from a psychological condition. With an elliptical structure and teasing timeline, the play handles the subject sensitively, with vivid, sympatheticallydrawn characters and nicelybalanced dialectics. Polar Bears is thoughtprovoking and intelligent, with echoes of Nietszchean philosophy, and it refuses to offer any easy answers for those embroiled in mental instability. The plot is as John has never met anyone like Kay. When the moon is in the right phase, she is magnetic and amazingly alive. But when the darkness closes in, she is lost to another world, a world in which John does not belong.Mark Haddon is a hugely celebrated writer who is best known for his 2003 novel The Curious Incident of The Dog in the NightTime , which won a string of prestigious awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year. It quickly became an international bestseller, was printed in 32 countries and translated into 15 languages.Polar Bears is his first work for the theatre and enjoyed a high profile premiere at the Donmar Warehouse 1 April 22 May 2010, directed by Jamie Lloyd and starring Jodhi May and Richard Coyle.

Pools winner and total wazzock, Dennis Sidebottom has moved next door to Ben — bringing his squeaky-clean kids with him. The Crane Grove Crew — Ben, Barney and Jenks — soon find themselves on the Sidebottom blacklist. Accused of being troublemakers and a bad influence, they decide to shake up the Sidebottom universe with the help of Agent Z, a meteorite and a stolen penguin. It’s Agent Z’s finest hour!From the Trade Paperback edition.

More mischief from those practical jokers, the Crane Grove Crew, by the author of the bestselling The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time .Ben’s repulsive cousin, T.J., comes to stay. He discovers an incriminating videotape of Agent Z activities and blackmails Ben into becoming his slave. Meanwhile, Ben, Jenks and Barney embark on their first film, entitled Invasion of the Killer Bananas. When T.J. disappears, however, the film points towards Ben, Jenks and Barney as murder suspects! In an attempt to clear their names, the boys use all the cunning of Agent Z to try and lure T.J. home and into the hands of the police…

‘Prize-winning novelist Mark Haddon, author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENCE OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME and most recently THE RED HOUSE, explores his childhood fear of swimming and his adult fear of flying in a beautifully wrought essay that unfolds into profound reflections about the craft of writing and about life itself.’

The summer term is dragging on, and Ben's life is lacking excitement — until, that is, the evening he finds worms in his bed and a note telling him that this is the work of Agent Z. But who is Agent Z? After some detective work Ben discovers that his mates, Barney and Jenks are responsible and together they start playing practical jokes on their unsuspecting schoolmates, under the code name Agent Z. They put plastic tarantulas in the school gravy, clingfilm over loo seats and attach kippers to car engines. But perhaps their greatest triumph is when their secret surveillance uncovers the school bully as a great big joke! Mark Haddon has a sharp understanding of what makes children tick, and they will delight in the ever more daring, ever more hilarious missions of Agent Z and his three creators.

Original Fiction, Short Story“He realizes how big the river is, now that he is inside it, how strong, how lost the woman must be, and how slim his chances are of finding her.”

Toni is delighted when a genie grants her wish for tomato soup but soon finds that a little soup can go a long way.

Ben's in danger of spending his holidays cooped up in a caravan with his Mad Aunt Gwen. But by luck (and bribery), he gets a place on the school trip to an outward-bound centre in Wales, along with Barney, Jenks and, of course, Agent Z. Abseiling, orienteering, sinking enemy canoes and sabotaging toothpaste are all in a day's work for the Crane Grove Crew. But then they uncover a news clipping which reveals that their centre manager, the affectionately nicknamed 'Grenade-head', is in fact an escaped bank robber. He's planning to recover the buried loot any night now and Agent Z and the crew intend to be there when he does. If you think that sounds like a downright ridiculous plan, you'd be right. Especially as the escaped criminal story turns out to be the inventionof the crew's new pal, Roz and for once, the jokes on them! Mark Haddon has a sharp understanding of what makes children tick, and they will delight in the ever more daring, ever more hilarious missions of Agent Z and his three creators.

Мировые бестселлеры от Джонатана Сафрана Фоера и Марка Хэддона, получившие множество литературных премий, знаменитые экранизацией и театральными постановками. В основе романов — трогательные, искренние, щемящие душу истории, перевернувшие жизнь двух особенных мальчишек, отдаленно похожих друг на друга.

When the children wake up one morning the air is silent and the room is full of soft blue light."It's snowed!" says Alice. "It's like the North Pole!" But their father warns them to beware of stumbling upon the Ice Bear's cave, and thus begins an icy adventure.

Follows the adventures of Gilbert's amazing gobstopper as it travels from his mouth to the bottom of the sea to the wilds of outer space.

Presents words for articles that may be found on a trip to the seashore with illustrations showing the items being used by colorful dinosaurs

Presents words for articles that may be found in the backyard with illustrations showing the items being used by colorful dinosaurs

He dangerously over-eats; just as seriously he lives at home in fear of the outdoors. Until Leah calls and his life takes a dramatic turn..