After Rufus Scott, an embittered and unemployed black jazz-musician commits suicide, his sister Ida and old friend Vivaldo become lovers. Yet their feelings for each other are complicated by Rufus's friends, especially the homosexual actor Eric Jones who has been Vivaldo's lover.

A collection of short stories, including Heavy Water ; Straight Fiction ; Career Moves ; The Janitor on Mars ; Let Me Count the Times ; and others.

The narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life... all Samson has to do is to write it as it happens.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

A true story of the Berlin Tunnel or Operation Gold, the abortive brainchild of the CIA and MI6.

Charles Highway, a precociously intelligent and highly sexed teenager, is determined to sleep with an older woman before he turns twenty. Rachel fits the bill perfectly and Charles plans his seduction meticulously, sets the scene with infinite care - but it doesn't come off quite as Charles expects.