Bøker i Vintage Minis-serien

Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first arrives in London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker...

Can we truly know the one we love? The author looks straight into the green eye of every lover's jealous struggle. He broods on why we are driven to try possess one another, how jealousy can outlive death, and whether we can ever reclaim those careless days of first love.

A self-described 'emigrant from one place and a newcomer in two', the author explores the true meaning of home. He looks at what it means to belong, whether roots are real and homelands imaginary, what it is like to reconfigure your past from fragments of memory and what happens when East meets West.

How to be a good father? From children's birthday parties, unsuccessful family holidays, to humiliating antenatal music classes, this account of family life presents the trials of parenthood.

Sets out a manifesto for how to cook (and eat) good food every day with a minimum of fuss. From basic roast chicken and pea risotto to white truffles and Turkish Delight figs, the author brings the joy back into the kitchen.

What's the worst another drink could do? From the calculating teenager who raids her parents' liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, this title includes stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done.

How does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, he describes an illness that reduced him from a successful writer to a man arranging his own destruction.

When it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this book, the author confronts our unending obsession with the end. It reflects on what it means to miss God, whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually turn into our parents.

How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? The author - lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual - finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer this very question. He recounts his journey from disbelief to something approaching inner peace and tackles one of the great mysteries of our time - how to survive this modern age.

Babies: our biggest mystery and our most natural consequence, our hardest test and our enduring love. The author describes the intensity, bewilderment and extravagant happiness of her experience of having babies, from the exhaustion of early pregnancy to first smiles and becoming acquainted with the long reaches of the night.

Welcome to motherhood - a land of aching fatigue, constant self-sacrifice and thankless servitude, a land of bottomless devotion, small hands and feet like warm pink roses, and velvet kisses. Selected from Helen Simpson's short story collections, this title deals with motherhood.

Is there anything quite so exhilarating as swimming in wild water? This swimming tour of Britain offers a frog's-eye view of the country's best bathing holes - the rivers, rock pools, lakes, ponds, lochs and sea that define a watery island.