With a new introduction by Susan Hill.
In this dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties.
As puppet master, Julius artfully plays on the human tendency to embrace drama and intrigue and to prefer the distraction of confrontations to the difficult effort of communicating openly and honestly."

When Marion Taylor takes a post as governess at Gaze Castle, a remote house upon a coast, she finds herself confronted with weird mysteries. Some crime or catastrophe in the past still keeps the house under a spell.

Martin believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education.

Jake Donaghue is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living as a translator and by sponging on his friends. A meeting again, after some years, with Anna, an old flame, leads him into a series of fantastic adventures.

Iris Murdoch conjures a murky London setting for a story of a brilliant and flawed man hoping for redemptiton.
Saved by education from a delinquent childhood, cheated out of Oxford by a tragic love tangle, Hilary Burde cherishes his obsessive guilt and disappointment in a dull, orderly civil service job. When the man whom he has harmed and betrayed reappears as head of his department, Hilary hopes for forgiveness, even for redemption and a new life, but finds himself haunted by a ghostly repetition.
- With a new introduction by Ray Monk (British philosopher and academic)

Introduction by Declan Kiberd

The scene is Dublin in 1916. As rebellion looms, tension mounts in the sombre, rain-soaked Dublin streets. A single Anglo-Irish family provides the diverse characters: Pat Dumay, a Catholic and an Irish patriot; his pious mother pursuing her private war with his step-father; Pat's English-Protestant cousin Andrew Chase-White, an officer in King Edward's Horse and Frances, the girl he loves. Weaving between them all moves Millie Kinnard - fast, feminist, and only just respectable.

"Iris Murdoch has written a book which concerns all of us as human beings. There are pages here that one wants to embrace her for, pages that say things of fundamental human importance in a way that they have never quite been said before." --"Sunday Telegraph"
The decline of religion and ever increasing influence of science pose acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Indeed, are we in danger of losing most of the qualities which...

Austin is one of those people who needs to survive through the destruction of others. The others, in Austin's case, include his successful elder brothers, Matthew, and the women who, one after the other, are so touchingly convinced that they can 'save' him. This is the story of the relentless struggle for survival of Austin, the accidental man.

The quiet life of schoolteacher Bill Mor and his family is disturbed when Rain Carter arrives at the school to paint the portrait of the headmaster. Mor becomes aware of new desires and his wife and children fight discreetly and ruthlessly against Rain and her influence over him.

"It is witty and wise and provocative... brilliantly good." --"Evening Standard"
"
The Black Prince" is both a remarkable thriller and a story about being in love.
Bradley Pearson, narrator and hero, is an elderly writer with a 'block'. Finding himself surrounded by predatory friends and relations -- his ex-wife, her delinquent brother, a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, Baffin's restless wife and engaging daughter -- Bradley attempts to escape. His failure to do so and its aftermath lead to a violent climax and a most unexpected conclusion.