Oliver, an orphan in London's perilous streets, struggles against poverty and joins a relentless criminal gang. Dickens vividly depicts the city's underworld, highlighting the plight of thieves and homeless children while giving a voice to the disadvantaged and abused.
When genial amateur detective, Alistair MacTavish takes a much anticipated holiday in the South Downs, which was supposed to be a peaceful rest, he finds fate has other plans in store for him. Should he follow his instinct or dismiss his well-known imagination and its developing theory as absurd? For the missing Findlay McQuarrie, Alzheimer's may have dimmed his immediate perceptions, but not enough to stop his crucial help. Both Alistair's instinct and Findlay's limited brightness play their extraordinary and intriguing part in trying to solve a wicked crime. Once again, Robert Irvine has written a thought-provoking mystery with a fine series of surprises, twists and turns.
This book argues that American schools are marked by fundamental structural deficiencies that get in the way of student achievement.
In this Complete Critical Guide to her life and work, Irvine offers insightful analysis of all of Austen's novels. This essential guidebook will be invaluable to students of English Literature, Romanticism, Literary Criticism and The Novel.
Available for pre-order now From #1 Sunday Times bestseller Irvine Welsh, the brand new novel in the CRIME series featuring former detective Ray LennoxOLD TRUTHS HAVE NEW CONSEQUENCESRay Lennox is determined to move on from his darkest days. The maverick former detective has left Edinburgh for a fresh start in Brighton. Soon, his fixations and addictions have been replaced with quiet evenings and a rigorous fitness regime.Then Lennox meets Mathew Cardingworth. Rich, smooth-talking and immaculately dressed, he presents himself as a successful, and respectable, property developer. Yet their encounter reawakens memories that have haunted Lennox for decades, sending him into a spiral of confusion and rage.Lennox has no choice - he must confront the events of his childhood. But the more he identifies the links between Cardingworth, the disappearance of a group of foster care boys and the violence of his past, the more he finds himself asking:What will he sacrifice to achieve resolution at last?
The Seal Club is a three-novella collection by the authors Alan Warner, Irvine Welsh and John King, three stories that capture their ongoing interests and concerns, stories that reflect bodies of work that started with Morvern Callar, Trainspotting and The Football Factory - all best-sellers, all turned into high-profile films.
Irvine Welsh, 'poet laureate of the chemical generation', exposes the seamy underbelly of rave's utopian dream. Lloyd, our permanently pilled-up protagonist, pushes his weekends to breaking point and beyond in this frazzled trip through Scottish clubland. He experiences the vertiginous uppers and downers of the Second Summer of Love, dabbles in a…
Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his family starts to fracture, Mark's life swings out of control and he succumbs to the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas. The way out is heroin. It's no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence - the worlds of the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all. Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred - but a lot of laughs, and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.
