The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road returns with the second of a two-volume masterpiece: Stella Maris is an intimate portrait of grief and longing, as a young woman in a psychiatric facility seeks to understand her own existence.
Adapted by the Coen Brothers into an Academy Award winning film, No Country For Old Men is a dark and suspenseful novel from Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road . Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles upon a transaction gone horribly wrong. Finding bullet-ridden bodies, several kilos of heroin, and a caseload of cash, he faces a choice - leave the scene as he found it, or cut the money and run. Choosing the latter, he knows, will change everything. And so begins a terrifying chain of events, in which each participant seems determined to answer the question that one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life? This edition is part of the Picador Collection, a new list of the best in contemporary literature published in Picador''s 50th Anniversary year. McCarthy''s eagerly anticipated new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris , will be published by Picador in October 2022.
In this semi-autobiographical work, a man abandons his life of privilege to live among eccentrics, criminals and the impoverished of Knoxville. Suttree is a humorous, compelling tapestry of life on the edge from Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road and Blood Meridian.
'Suttree contains a humour that is Faulknerian in its gentle wryness, and a freakish imaginative flair' - Times Literary Supplement
1951. Cornelius Suttree lives alone, exiled on a disintegrating houseboat on the wrong side of the Tennessee River. As we meet him, Suttree watches the police haul the body of a suicidal man from the water. Amongst the living, the river is home to hermits, sex workers, alcoholics - and a witch.
Conjuring James Joyce's Ulysses, Suttree wanders the river with a detachment and wry humour, encountering a broad cast of humanity as he does - even as dereliction and destitution threaten the last of his remaining dignity.
'Suttree is like a good, long scream in the ear' - New York Times
Praise for Cormac McCarthy:
'McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute' - Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren
'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' - Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series
'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' - Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
The post-apocalyptic modern classic with an introduction by novelist John Banville. In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless men stalk the roadside, lying in wait. Attempting to survive in this brave new world, the young boy and his protector have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves. They must keep walking. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Road is an incandescent novel, the story of a remarkable and profoundly moving journey. In this unflinching study of the best and worst of humankind, Cormac McCarthy boldly divines a future without hope, but one in which, miraculously, this young family finds tenderness. An exemplar of post-apocalyptic writing, The Road is a true modern classic, a masterful, moving and increasingly prescient novel. This edition is part of the Picador Collection, a new list of the best in contemporary literature published in Picador''s 50th Anniversary year. McCarthy''s eagerly anticipated new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris , will be published by Picador in October 2022.
With an introduction by Philipp Meyer The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Set in the anarchic world opened up by America''s westward expansion, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic and potent account of the barbarous violence that man visits upon man. Through the hostile landscape of the Texas-Mexico border wanders the Kid, a fourteen year-old Tennessean who is quickly swept-up in the relentless tide of blood. But the apparent chaos is not without its order: while Americans hunt Indians - collecting scalps as their bloody trophies - they too are stalked as prey. Since its first publication in 1985, Blood Meridian has been read as both a brilliant subversion of the Western novel and a blazing example of that form. Powerful and savagely beautiful, it has emerged as one of the most important works in American fiction of the last century. A truly mesmerising classic. ''A bloody and starkly beautiful tale'' Sunday Times ''Unlike anything I have read in recent years, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement'' John Banville
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road returns with the first of a two-volume masterpiece: The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, a
The Crossing forms the second part of Cormac McCarthy''s critically acclaimed Border Trilogy, a story that began with All the Pretty Horses and concludes with Cities of the Plain . Set on the south-western ranches in the years before the Second World War, Cormac McCarthy''s The Crossing follows the fortunes of sixteen-year-old Billy Parham and his younger brother Boyd. Fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family''s property, Billy captures the animal - but rather than kill it, sets out impulsively for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from. When Billy comes back to his own home he finds himself and his world irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and once again the border beckons with its desolate beauty and cruel promise. '' The Crossing is like a river in full spate: beautiful and dangerous'' The Times This edition is part of the Picador Collection, a new list of the best in contemporary literature published in Picador''s 50th Anniversary year. McCarthy''s eagerly anticipated new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris , will be published by Picador in October 2022.
John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood. The first volume in McCarthy''s legendary Border Trilogy, All The Pretty Horses is an acknowledged masterpiece and a grand love story: a novel about childhood passing, along with innocence and a vanished American age. Steeped in the wisdom that comes only from loss, it is a magnificent parable of responsibility, revenge and survival. This edition is part of the Picador Collection, a new list of the best in contemporary literature published in Picador''s 50th Anniversary year. McCarthy''s eagerly anticipated new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris , will be published by Picador in October 2022.
1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wetsuit and plunges from the boat deck into darkness. His divelight illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot''s flightbag, the plane''s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit - by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul. Traversing the American South, from the garrulous bar rooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.
A haunting and disturbing tale of a violent outcast, Child of God is Cormac McCarthy's most shocking and brutally compelling work. From the author of Blood Meridian and The Road.
1960s, Tennessee. Lester Ballard is a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman, dispossessed on his ancestral land. Homeless, indulging in voyeurism, he is accused of rape.
When he is released from jail, he begins to haunt the hilly landscape - preying upon its population, unleashing his impulse for sexualised violence.
As the story hurtles toward its unforgettable conclusion, McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with empathy and lyricism.
'A powerful and talented writer, able to elicit compassion for his protagonist however terrible his action' - Sunday Times
Praise for Cormac McCarthy:
'McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute' - Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren
'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' - Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series
'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' - Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.
A haunting tale of guilt and redemption, Cormac McCarthy's gothic masterpiece Outer Dark follows a brother and sister on a dark journey through the Appalachian wilderness.
'A profound parable that ultimately speaks to any society in any time' - Time
In an unspecified place in Appalachia, a woman named Rinthy gives birth to her brother's child.
The brother, Culla, abandons the baby in the woods, and tells Rinthy that he has died by natural causes. When she sees his grave empty, she sets forth alone to find her son.
Wracked by sin, Culla too leaves for the countryside. He will be haunted by The Trio, punishers and murderers, as the novel moves towards its eerie, apocalyptic resolution.
Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.
Praise for Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road and No Country for Old Men:
'McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute' - Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren
'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' - Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series
'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' - Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
The story of John Grady Cole, who at 16 finds himself at the dying end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. He escapes to Mexico with friends, but what begins as a comic adventure, leads to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
Set in rural Tennessee between the world wars, The Orchard Keeper is the unique, darkly biblical debut novel from the legendary author of Blood Meridian and The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
'McCarthy has the best kind of Southern style' - New York Times
John Wesley Rattner is a young boy when his father is murdered. Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger, strangled him to death.
By chance, John and Marion will meet. They will not recognize each other; John will not know what this man has done.
An experimental debut following in the footsteps of William Faulkner, this is a magnificent conjuring of an American landscape - and a devastating portrayal of innocence lost.
Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.
'A complicated and evocative exposition of the transience of life' - Harper's
Praise for Cormac McCarthy:
'McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute' - Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren
'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' - Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series
'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' - Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted play from the legendary Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian.
'The Sunset Limited grips from the very first page' - Financial Times
A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made.
In that small apartment the two men, known as 'Black' and 'White', begin a conversatino that leads each back through his own history.
White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con in recovery for drug addiction, is the more hopeful of the men. He is, however, desperate to convince White of the power of faith - while White is desperate to deny it.
Between them, they hope to discover the meaning of life itself.
Praise for Cormac McCarthy:
'McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute' - Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren
'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' - Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series
'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' - Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
The first original screenplay by the great American novelist Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road and No Country for Old Men. Now a major motion picture from Twentieth Century Fox.
A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made. In that small apartment, "Black" and "White," as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men-though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is desperate to deny it. Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life. Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deceptively intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time.
