WINNER OF WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2007 "Lloyd Jones's psychogeographic epic about, among other things, Wales, football, water-divining, madness, vampires, Merlin, legends, policemen, birds, mannequins and picnics, is full of ideas but (purposefully) spirals far away from any kind of narrative. Absurdist and resonant, this is a meditation on a nation that is anything but straightforward." THE GUARDIAN "Few people write with this much verve any more. An extraordinary work of the imagination." THE INDEPENDENT "Lyrical and inventive." THE TIMES Mr Cassini, the remarkable follow-up to the award-winning Mr Vogel, is an amazing journey through the geography of one man's troubled mind as he tries to recover the lost years of his childhood. Duxie is a dreamer with holes in his memory. With the help of a mysterious and beautiful girl he sets out on a quest to fill the gaps in his history. And as they search the landscapes and myths of the past they uncover domestic and national tyranny. The tale twists together strands of dream, daydream and reality as Duxie journeys towards freedom – and a final understanding of what caused his amnesia. Because lurking deep within his dreams is a sinister, vampire figure called Mr Cassini, who drinks women's tears, keeps stolen mannequins in a darkened room, and gets up to terrible deeds with his policeman side-kick. Journeying through time, Duxie investigates caves and wells, mystics and madness, and seeks out four extraordinary champions to help him stage a showcase trial on a mountain in the centre of Wales. Mr Cassini is a novel with many themes, including monsters, snow, picnics, islands, drugs, rainbows, eating disorders, insects, justice and magic. Lloyd Jones walked around Wales – a journey of more than a thousand miles – while writing his first novel, the prize-winning Mr Vogel. For Mr Cassini he changed tack, walking across Wales seven times in seven different directions. The result is an ambitious and brilliant exploration of lost childhood and the distortions of the past. Learned, funny and tragic, Mr Cassini is told in dazzling colour.

Winner of the McKitterick First Novel Award. Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. "One of the most remarkable books ever written on the subject of Wales" – Jan Morris on Lloyd Jones' extraordinary debut novel, Mr Vogel. Acclaimed novelist Iain Sinclair, meanwhile, has described it as "the tour-guide Wales has been waiting for." One of the most original and engaging novels to appear from – and about – Wales in recent years, Mr Vogel is all the more remarkable for the author's own amazing story. Following a bout of alcoholism which nearly killed him, Lloyd decided to recuperate by walking around Wales. It was this epic walk which inspired Lloyd to write Mr Vogel, "an astonishing mixture of fantasy, philosophy and travel" (Jan Morris). The novel begins with the discovery, in the attic of a second-hand bookshop, of an account of a lame man's mysterious quest – the so-called 'Vogel Papers'; the account tells of an unnamed colonial outpost, a land which resembles Wales but which is somehow skewed. Our guide, a Welshman, becomes obsessed with the Vogel Papers: his investigations take him across three continents and around his homeland – from Anglesey to Pembrokeshire, from Bangor to the Black Mountains – in search of a strange man known only as Mr Vogel. Accompanied by his reprobate friends Paddy and Waldo, as well as a motley crowd of academics, osteopaths and famous writers (not to mention a piglet and a couple of teddybears), our narrator gradually nears the end of his search. Only then does it become clear that the real Mr Vogel was never very far away after all. Mr Vogel is a story of one man's dream of freedom, love and friendship. Compelling and warm-hearted, it is at once a novel, an anthology and a memoir; above all it is a reflection on the importance of hope and a celebration of Wales' culture, landscape and people. In the words of Iain Sinclair, "Stop what you're doing and listen to this mongrel monologue!"

The spectacular reappearance of the aurora borealis at the beginning of the 18th century, often observed simultaneously from different observatories in Europe, mobilized and federated a large community of astronomers on a European scale. It encouraged them to communicate the results of their observations and, in compiling exhaustive catalogs of information, has helped to establish a system of the aurora borealis that can be further studied in the future, according to the experimental method inherited from the previous century. This book is dedicated to some of the main aurora observers in Europe and to the human, institutional and philosophical context in which they evolved in the first half of the 18th century. Its reading should be seen as a retrospective journey through the scholarly world of the Enlightenment, during which the same scholars are frequently encountered and reencountered, yet each time in different contexts, or from different angles, with the aim of compiling an account of the swarming of ideas and encounters that constituted the development of experimental science in this pivotal period.

In this luminous novel about romance and illusion—and what's left of love when they're stripped away—an American Anglophile is drawn into the lives of a disintegrating aristocratic family. After the sudden death of her husband, Annie Devereaux flees to England, site of the nostalgic fantasies her father spun for her before he deserted the family. A chance encounter in London leads Annie to cancel her return to New York and move in with Julian, the disaffected, moody son of Helena Denby, a famous British geneticist. As their relationship progresses, Annie meets Julian's sisters Isabel and Sasha, each of them fragile in her own way, and becomes infatuated with visions of their idyllic childhood in England's West Country. But the more she uncovers about Julian's past, the more he explodes into rage and violence. Finally tearing herself away, Annie winds up adrift in London, rescued from her loneliness only when she and Isabel form an unexpected bond. Slowly, with Isabel as her reluctant guide, Annie learns of the emotional devastation that Helena's warped arrogance, her monstrous will to dominate, inflicted on her children. The family who once embodied Annie's idealized conception of England is actually caught in a nightmare of betrayal and guilt that spirals inexorably into tragedy.