For Picador’s 40th anniversary we asked 40 writers to respond to the idea of 40 in whatever way they liked. The results are spectacular: thoughtful, funny, poignant, as brilliantly diverse as the Picador list. Pieces include the temporal (what I was doing 40 years ago; the mid-life crisis of a 40-year-old whose lifespan coincides with Picador’s), the quirky (gifts I’d like to receive for my 40th birthday; 40 things to do before I die; what it’s like never to have been on any of those Best Under 40 lists), and the downright clever (40-word synopses of great works of literature), along with some astonishingly good short stories and poems touching on mortality and ageing. The authors range from great established writers on the list, like Alice Sebold, John Banville and Graham Swift, to new stars, such as Emma Straub, Belinda McKeon and Megan Abbott, and 33 more!

Translations from Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil and the South sit alongside writing in English, bringing to light the greatest and most engaging writers from India's recent history. With introductions to the writers and their work, this is an electic and enlightening anthology of Indian writing.

In our deepest grief we still turn instinctively to poetry for solace. These poems, drawn from many different ages and cultures, remind us that the experience of parting is a timelessly human one: however alone the loss of a loved one leaves us, our mourning is also something that deeply unites us; these poems of parting and passing, of sorrow and healing, will find a deep echo within those who find themselves dealing with grief or bereavement. Whatever our loss, it is assuaged in finding a voice – and whether that voice is one of private remembrance or public memorial, The Picador Book of Funeral Poems will help you towards it.

This collection of pithy, brilliantly acerbic pieces is a companion to Sixty Stories, Barthelme's earlier retrospective volume. Barthelme spotlights the idiosyncratic, haughty, sometimes downright ludicrous behavior of human beings, but it is style rather than content which takes precedence.

An enchanting and joyous exploration of life and creativity at the geographical edges of the modern world Who is a provincial? In this subversive book, Sumana Roy assembles a striking cast of writers, artists, filmmakers, cricketers, tourist guides, English teachers, lovers and letter writers, private tutors and secret-keepers whose lives and work provide varied answers to that question. Combining memoir with the literary, sensory, and emotional history of an ignored people, she challenges the metropolitan's dominance to reclaim the joyous dignity of provincial life, its tics and taunts, enthusiasms and tragicomedies. In a wide-ranging series of "postcards" from the peripheries of India, Europe, America, and the Middle East, Roy brings us deep into the imaginative world of those who have carried their provinciality like a birthmark. Ranging from Rabindranath Tagore to William Shakespeare, John Clare to the Bhakti poets, T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee, V. S. Naipaul to the Brontës, and Kishore Kumar to Annie Ernaux, she celebrates the provincials' humor and hilarity, playfulness and irony, belatedness and instinct for carefree accidents and freedom. Her unprecedented account of provincial life offers an alternative portrait of our modern world.

Originally published in 2015 by Faber and Faber in Great Britain.

A tribute to the finest writers on the game of cricket and an acknowledgement that the great days of cricket literature are behind us. There was a time when major English writers – P. G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alec Waugh – took time off to write about cricket, whereas the cricket book market today is dominated by ghosted autobiographies and statistical compendiums. The Picador Book of Cricket celebrates the best writing on the game and includes many pieces that have been out of print, or difficult to get hold of, for years. Including Neville Cardus, C. L. R. James, John Arlott, V. S. Naipaul, and C. B. Fry, this anthology is a must for any cricket follower or anyone interested in sports writing elevated to high art.

Susie Salmon is just like any other young American girl. She wants to be beautiful, adores her charm bracelet and has a crush on a boy from school. There's one big difference though – Susie is dead. Add: Now she can only observe while her family manage their grief in their different ways. Susie is desperate to help them and there might be a way of reaching them... Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones is a unique coming-of-age tale that captured the hearts of readers throughout the world. Award-winning playwright Bryony Lavery has adapted it for this unforgettable play about life after loss.

Kate—a wife, a mother of two, and a senior executive at a multinational hotel company—has made caring for others her life’s work, and she’s good at it. But when she opens her husband’s computer to find a series of email exchanges with an unknown woman, it all begins to fall apart. After ten years of marriage, Kate is forced to take a closer look at her relationship with her husband, and she must ask herself: How well do I really know him? Things begin to spiral at work, too, with the political machinations in the office reaching an increasingly Shakespearean level of drama and ferocity. Kate gets caught between the ravings of power-hungry bosses and her job, which is to make the hotel guests happy. With both her work and home lives crumbling around her, Kate, for the first time, begins to think about what it is she really wants: from her husband, from her job, from her life. Lover, the British writer Anna Raverat’s U.S. debut, is an observation of love, work, and life as seen through the lens of a troubled marriage. With the irresistible wit of Emma Straub’s The Vacationers, the compelling candor of Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and no shortage of brightening humor, Raverat paints an acute portrait of the female psyche, freshly exploring intimacy and the politics of work. Intellectually rich and captivatingly poignant, Lover is the powerful story of a woman making her way in the world.

When they were young men, Kim and his best friend, Garland Rain, travelled the world. They worked as dive guides, living free and easy by the sea. Garland is still out there, but Kim’s life is different now. He’s married and a father of three. Still longing for the freedom of the water, Kim agrees to help Garland run a one-time trip to the spectacular Brothers Islands in the Red Sea. What neither man expects is just how badly wrong it will go. Drugs and violence collide, and not everyone returns safely. Back on dry land, Kim finds that the decisions you make in the moment can come back to haunt you, even follow you home.