Nine classic short stories portraying the isolation, criminality, morality, and rebellion of the working class from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe
The titular story follows the internal decisions and external oppressions of a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center who is known only by his surname, Smith. The wardens have given the boy a light workload because he shows talent as a runner. But if he wins...

A top-secret mission sends a crew of Royal Air Force veterans from South Africa to the subarctic Kerguelen Islands in this suspense-packed tale of lawlessness, piracy, obsession, and greed. At the helm of the Aldebaran, a huge flying boat, sits the monomaniacal Captain Bennett, a man hell-bent on unearthing a treasure buried by the Germans in the final days of World War II. And on the seaplane's radio is the young wireless operator Adcock, a man who...

A story of love and romance between two lost people in 1950s Britain, from the author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner   Every morning Pam decides to leave George. Somehow she never quite gets around to it. She's flirted with suicide too, but she doesn't see the point. A woman would have to be mad to kill herself for the sake of George. He's a brute, vain and selfish, with a cruel sense of humor and absolutely no regard for his wife....

Over forty short stories spanning the career of England's most acclaimed postwar writer-including the iconic "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner."   This comprehensive collection of short fiction from bestselling British author Alan Sillitoe mixes aggression with humor, and common working-class men with extraordinary twists of fate. It compiles works selected from the master storyteller's bestselling books, including The Loneliness of the...

This is familiar Sillitoe territory: a grim Northern town peopled by characters one step away from social oblivion. By chance Peter Granby, 19, meets Eileen, a wealthy middle-aged widow, and she provides his opportunity to escape the stultifying subjection of daily monotony.