A barrister, a "priest," a detective, a lovelorn Irishman, a handwriting expert, a heinous spiritual medium ― the very British bachelors of Spark's novel come in every stripe First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs and shopping at Fortnum's, 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, all together, into the nastiest of lawsuits. At the center of that suit hovers pale, blank Patrick Seton, the medium. Meanwhile, horrors of every size plague the poor bachelors ― from the rising price of frozen peas ("Your hand's never out of your pocket") to epileptic fits, forgeries, spiritualists foaming with protoplasm, and murder. And every horror delights: each is lit up by Spark's uncanny wit ― at once malicious, funny, and deadly serious. The Bachelors shows "the most gifted and innovative British novelist" (The New York Times) at her wicked best.

A young man's attempts to unwind after a complicated love affair by vacationing at a modest pensione in Venice are soon thwarted by the discovery of a body buried in the pensione's garden

Product Description: Together for the first time in one sparkling, delicious volume, here are the greatest essays of Muriel Spark A fantastic essayist, the inimitable Muriel Spark addresses here the writing life; love; cats; favorite writers (T. S. Eliot, Robert Burns, the Brontës, Mary Shelley); Piero della Francesca; life in wartime London and in glamorous “Hollywood-on-the-Tiber;” 1960s Rome; faith; and parties (on her first New Year’s Eve, as a baby sipping her mother’s sherry: “I always loved a party”)...read more

Product Description: Spark’s mind-bogglingly stunning 1957 debut 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.

In a post-war London boarding house, kindly Mrs. Hawkins, adept at handling other people's problems, finds herself a player in some very strange events

In mid-twentieth-century London, aspiring young writer Fleur Talbot becomes secretary to a motley group of egoists who are composing their memoirs in advance and uncovers material enough for any novelist, but is perplexed by the familiarity of their lives. Reprint.

Lise leaves her home in northern Europe for a holiday, but it is not rest and relaxation that she is looking for

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is the wickedly farcical fable of a blue-collar town turned upside down. When the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley hires Dougal Douglas to do "human research" into the private lives of its workforce, they are in no way prepared for the mayhem, mutiny, and murder he will stir up. "Not only funny but startlingly original," declared The Washington Post, "the legendary character of Dougal Douglas . . . may not have been boasting when he referred so blithely to his association with the devil."

A group of aging friends realizes that age has not brought wisdom and that they must face death as best they can

Product Description: Set amongst the ruins of London during the difficult spring and summer seasons of 1945, this satirical story is considered one of Muriel Spark’s finest novels. Delving into the delightfully carefree world of a group of girls living in a residential club for single women, the seductive tale provides a historical snapshot of an austere London that rises from the ashes...read more

''Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions . . . '' Thus begins Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club building itself --''three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit''-- its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal, practicing elocution and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. But the novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds.

High comedy as only Muriel Spark can write it--witty, precise, and illuminated by moral inquiry. From a young woman who strangely attracts violent death, to delightfully mad Uncle Magnus, to the hilarious Sisters of Good Hope, the cast of characters move through the ingenious plot at dizzying speed, and readers are once again in the hands of a master stylist.

A teacher at a girl's school in Edinburgh during the 1930s comes into conflict with school authorities because of her unorthodox teaching methods.

Muriel Spark was a poet before she was a novelist. The poems here present the range of her poetry. Here are villanelles, ballads and epigrams, as well as freer forms, marked by precise observation and command of her medium. Her poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into moments of strangeness.