In this final collection of ten exquisite, perceptive and profound stories, William Trevor probes into the depths of the human spirit. Here we encounter a tutor and his pupil, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when they meet again years later; a young girl who discovers the mother she believed dead is alive and well; and a piano-teacher who accepts her pupil’s theft in exchange for his beautiful music. These gorgeous stories – the last that Trevor wrote before his death – affirm his place as one of the world’s greatest storytellers.

‘Trevor is a master of both language and storytelling’ Hilary Mantel

‘He is one of the great short-story writers, at his best the equal of Chekhov’ John Banville

‘The greatest living writer of short stories in the English language’ New Yorker

After nineteen years of marriage, three children and a brief but passionate affair followed by a quick divorce, Elizabeth Aidallbery has to go to hospital for an emergency operation. From her hospital bed she has the leisure to take stock of her life, and frankly it doesn’t look very edifying: there’s the 17 year old daughter who’s run off to a commune with her boyfriend; an old hopeless suitor who continues to press his claims; and of course the memory of the havoc she caused by the affair.

No doubt she could put her life back in order. But need that involve all those people who cause her so much heartache?

Readers of Love and Summer and Felicia’s Journey will be delighted by Elizabeth Alone. It will also be enjoyed by readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd.

‘A finely observed, gently sensitive comedy, delightful to read’ Daily Telegraph

‘Trevor is a master of both language and storytelling’ Hilary Mantel

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He has lived in England for many years. The author of numerous acclaimed collections of short stories and novels, he has won many awards including the Whitbread Book of the Year, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. He has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize: in 1976 with his novel The Children of Dynmouth, in 1991 with Reading Turgenev and in 2002 with The Story of Lucy Gault. He recently received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime’s literary achievement.

The probings of an outsider bring havoc to a crumbling Dublin hotel

What was the tragedy that turned O’Neill’s hotel from plush establishment into a dingy house of disrepute? Ivy Eckdorf is determined to find out. A professional photographer, she has come to Dublin convinced that a tragic and beautiful tale lies behind the facade of this crumbling hotel. The aging proprietor lies dying upstairs while her feckless son is lost in a world of drink and horseracing; and the loyal O’Shea, accompanied everywhere by his greyhound, seeks to keep the hotel on the road. As Mrs Eckdorf worms her way into lives that centre on the hotel, she becomes as much a victim as they are.

‘An astounding richness of pathos, humour and tragedy’ Francis King

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He has lived in England for many years. The author of numerous acclaimed collections of short stories and novels, he has won many awards including the Whitbread Book of the Year, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. He has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize: in 1976 with his novel The Children of Dynmouth, in 1991 with Reading Turgenev and in 2002 with The Story of Lucy Gault. He recently received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime’s literary achievement.

Family secrets take their toll on the children of an old Irish family

In the summer of 1904 Sarah Pollenfax, the daughter of an impecunious clergyman, arrives at Carriglas, an island off the coast of Cork, to act as governess for her distant cousins. It’s a magical time in a magical place. But when she comes back almost thirty years later, after the First World War and the Irish Civil War have taken their toll, she discovers that there were things going on during that apparently idyllic summer which now horrify her and which cast a long shadow over the remnants of the family still living there.

‘William Trevor’s precisions and indirections slowly and balefully accumulate in this, his most ambitious novel’ Anthony Thwaite, London Review of Books

‘Offers marvels with Mr Trevor’s customary understated dexterity’ New York Times

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, in 1928. He spent his childhood in Ireland and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, but has lived in England for many years. An acknowledged master of the short-story form, he has also written many highly acclaimed novels: he has won the Whitbread Fiction Prize three times and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times. His most recent novel was Love and Summer (Penguin, 2010).

William Trevor’s The Children of Dynmouth (Winner of the Whitbread Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize) was first published in 1976 and is a classic account of evil lurking in the most unlikely places. In it we follow awkward, lonely, curious teenager Timothy Gedge as he wanders around the bland seaside town of Dynmouth. Timothy takes a prurient interest in the lives of the adults there, who only realise the sinister purpose to which he seeks to put his knowledge too late.

‘A small masterpiece of understatement … a work of rare compassion’ Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times

If you enjoyed The Story of Lucy Gault and Love and Summer, you will love this book. It will also be adored by readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd.

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime’s literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. His books in Penguin are: After Rain; A Bit on the Side; Bodily Secrets; Cheating at Canasta; The Children of Dynmouth; The Collected Stories (Volumes One and Two); Death in Summer; Felicia’s Journey; Fools of Fortune; The Hill Bachelors; Love and Summer; The Mark-2 Wife; Selected Stories; The Story of Lucy Gault and Two Lives.

A group of septuagenarians revive schoolboy conflicts in the election of the President of the Old Boys Association. Jaraby expects to get the job, but he reckons without the bitterness of Nox, who still remembers the humiliations of his school years. And when Jaraby’s son gets into trouble with the law, Nox has the perfect stick with which to beat him.

Their powers may be failing but the old boys possess a fierce understanding of the things in life that matter – power, revenge, hatred, love, and the failure of love.

The Old Boys was William Trevor’s acclaimed first novel. It will be enjoyed by fans of The Story of Lucy Gault and Felicia’s Journey, as well as readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd.

‘Uncommonly well-written, gruesome , funny and original’ Evelyn Waugh

‘Immaculately witty and inventive writing’ Daily Telegraph

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He has lived in England for many years. The author of numerous acclaimed collections of short stories and novels, he has won many awards including the Whitbread Book of the Year, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. He has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize: in 1976 with his novel The Children of Dynmouth, in 1991 with Reading Turgenev and in 2002 with The Story of Lucy Gault. He recently received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime’s literary achievement.

‘Evocative and haunting. Trevor writes like an angel, but is determined to wring your heart’ Daily Mail

‘Marvellous, superb. As rich and moving as anything I have read in years. When I reach the end . . . I wanted to start right again at the beginning’ Guardian

In Reading Turgenev an Irish country girl is trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man, but finds release through secret meetings with a man who shares her passion for Russian novels.

My House in Umbria tells of Emily Delahunty, a writer of romantic novels, who helps the survivors of a bomb attack on a train to convalesce, inventing colourful pasts for her patients.

Two novels, two women who retreat further into the realm of the imagination until the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred . . .

‘One of the most beautiful and memorable things Trevor has written’ Independent on Sunday

Reading Turgenev was shortlisted for the Booker Prize

‘A book so brilliant that it compels you to stay up all night galloping through to the end’ Daily Mail

You’re beautiful, Johnny told her.

So, full of hope, seventeen-year-old Felicia crosses the Irish Sea to England to find her lover and tell him she is pregnant. Desperately searching for Johnny in the bleak post-industrial Midlands, she is instead found by Mr Hilditch, a strange and lonely man, a collector and befriender of homeless young girls . . .

‘Immensely readable. The plot twist is both sinister and affecting, and so skilfully done that you remember why authors had plot twists in the first place’ Guardian

Readers of The Story of Lucy Gault and Love and Summer will adore Felicia’s Journey. It will also be cherished by readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd.

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime’s literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature.

'A masterwork. I doubt that I have read a book as moving in at least a decade. A homage to the redemptive power of love' Independent

Summer, 1921. Eight-year-old Lucy Gault clings to the glens and woods above Lahardane – the home her family is being forced to abandon. She knows the Gaults are no longer welcome in Ireland and that danger threatens. Lucy, however, is headstrong and decides that somehow she must force her parents into staying. But the path she chooses ends in disaster. One chance event, unwanted and unexpected, will blight the lives of the Gaults for years to come and bind each of them in different ways to this one moment in time, to this wild stretch of coast . . .

'Flawless. Guaranteed to keep you reading – all through the night if necessary – to find out what happens. Trevor's best novel' New Statesman

'Dark, elegantly written … a book to relish' Independent on Sunday