At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and the story of Miles is one told from the points of view of four of them: a woman in her forties called Anna, a man in his sixties called Mark, a woman in her eighties called May, and a ten-year-old child called Brooke. The thing is . . . none of these people knows Miles anything more than glancingly. So how much is it possible to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, most fleeting meetings we have every day with other human beings?Brilliantly audacious, disarmingly playful, full of Smith’s trademark wit and puns, There But For The is a deft exploration of the human need for separation—from our pasts and from one another—and the redemptive possibilities for connections.

Product Description: A New York Review Books Original Winner of the 2009 Bernard Shaw Prize for Translation Fair Play is the type of love story that is rarely told, a revelatory depiction of contentment, hard-won and exhilarating.  Mari is a writer and Jonna is an artist, and they live at opposite ends of a big apartment building, their studios connected by a long attic passageway...read more

*This distinguished volume of essays commemorates the work of Angela Carter. With a new introduction by Ali Smith

Product Description: From the award-winning author of The Accidental and Hotel World comes a sparkling, surprising collection of the writing she loves best — and without which she would not have become a writer.The Book Lover is a treasure trove of what Ali Smith has loved over the course of her reading life, in her twenties, as a teenager, as a child...read more

NA

The ghost of Sara Wilby, a chambermaid who falls to her death in the hotel dumbwaiter, brings together four other women--Lise, a disgruntled receptionist; Else, a homeless woman; Penny, a journalist; and Clare, Sara's distraught sister.

Product Description: Other Stories and Other Stories is a stunning collection of short stories from Ali Smith. Individually lucid and luminous, these formally inventive and exquisite tales resonate subtly together. In examining the distances and connections between ourselves and others, and lightly and expertly inching us closer to the bone, storytelling itself has never seemed so necessary, so moving or so joyous...read more