William Golding Books In Order

To the Ends of the Earth Books In Publication Order

  1. Rites of Passage (1980)
  2. Close Quarters (1987)
  3. Fire Down Below (1989)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Lord of the Flies (1954)
  2. The Inheritors (1955)
  3. Pincher Martin / The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin (1956)
  4. Free Fall (1959)
  5. The Spire (1964)
  6. The Pyramid (1967)
  7. Darkness Visible (1979)
  8. The Paper Men (1984)
  9. The Double Tongue (1995)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Sometime, Never (1957)
  2. The Scorpion God (1971)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965)
  2. A Moving Target (1982)
  3. An Egyptian Journal (1985)

Plays In Publication Order

  1. Brass Butterfly (1958)

To the Ends of the Earth Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

William Golding Books Overview

Rites of Passage

Penelope Fitzgerald, who died in 2000, emerged late in life as one of the most remarkable English writers of the last century. She began her writing career in 1975 at the age of fifty nine, and over the next two decades she published three biographies, nine novels, and a collection of short stories. Now three of her acclaimed novels are gathered here in one volume.

The Bookshop is a postwar tragicomedy of manners, set in an isolated seaside town where an enterprising woman opens a bookstore only to find it beset by poltergeists, weather, and hostile townsfolk. The Gate of Angels is an Edwardian romance within a novel of ideas: a young doctor devoted to science and to his all male Cambridge college finds his life and views disrupted by a nurse named Daisy. The Blue Flower, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, revitalizes historical drama through the story of Novalis, an eighteenth century German romantic poet and visionary genius, and his unlikely love affair with a simple child woman. These three novels all display Fitzgerald’s characteristic wit, intellectual breadth, and narrative brilliance, applied to an array of traditional forms into which she breathed new life.

Close Quarters

The enthralling sequel to Golding’s Booker Prize winning 1980 novel, Rites of Passage, continuing the story of the 18th century fighting ship carrying passengers and cargo from England to Australia.

Fire Down Below

This novel completes Golding’s trilogy, begun with ‘Rites of Passage’ and continued with ‘Close Quarters’. The author won the Booker Prize for ‘Rites of Passage’ and was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1983.

Lord of the Flies

The story that never grows old…
Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse,Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic. And now readers can own it in a beautifully designed hardcover edition worthy of its stature. This Christmas’ meaningful gift, the 50th Anniversary Edition of the Lord of the Flies is the volume that every fan of this classic book will have to own.

The Inheritors

Eight Neanderthals encounter another race of beings like themselves, yet strangely different. This new race, Ho*mo sapiens, fascinating in their skills and sophistication, terrifying in their cruelty, sense of guilt, and incipient corruption, spell doom for the more gentle folk whose world they will inherit. Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Pincher Martin / The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin

Drowning in the freezing North Atlantic, Christopher Hadley Martin, temporary lieutenant, happens upon a grotesque rock, an island that appears only on weather charts. To drink there is a pool of rain water; to eat there are weeds and sea anemones. Through the long hours with only himself to talk to, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate, piece by terrible piece.

Free Fall

‘I was standing up, pressed back against the wall, trying not to breathe. I got there in the one movement my body made. My body had many hairs on legs and belly and chest and head, and each had its own life; each inherited a hundred thousand years of loathing and fear for things that scuttle or slide or crawl.’ from Free Fall

Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War II, he is taken as a prisoner of war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell like Lazarus from the tomb, seeing infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. Transfigured by his ordeal, he begins to realize what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. He determines to find the exact point at which the accumulated weight of those choices has deprived him of free will.

The Spire

Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral. His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations. Nevertheless, The Spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims. Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, and on Dean Jocelin in particular.

The Pyramid

Set in the superficially placid English village of Stillbourne, The Pyramid represents three episodes in the life of Oliver as a schoolboy, an undergraduate, and a mature young man. A compelling tale about Oliver’s increasing awareness of the deeper meanings of the relationships and events of his youth.

Darkness Visible

A dazzlingly dark novel by the Nobel Laureate. At the height of the London blitz, a naked child steps out of an all consuming fire. Miraculously saved yet hideously scarred, tormented at school and at work, Matty becomes a wanderer, a seeker after some unknown redemption. Two more lost children await him: twins as exquisite as they are loveless. Toni dabbles in political violence, Sophy in sexual tyranny. As Golding weaves their destinies together, as he draws them toward a final conflagration, his book lights up both the inner and outer darknesses of our time.

The Paper Men

English novelist Wilfred Barclay, who has known fame, success, and fortune, is in crisis. He faces a drinking problem slipping over the borderline into alcoholism, a dead marriage, and the incurable itch of middle age lust. But the final, unbearable irritation is American Professor of English Literature Rick L. Tucker, who is implacable in his determinition to become The Barclay Man: authorized biographer, editor of the posthumous papers and the recognized authority.

The Double Tongue

The last novel by the late Nobel Prize winning author of Lord of the Flies depicts an ancient prophetess, Arieka the Pythia, as she looks back over her strange life as the medium of the god Apollo at Delphi.

The Scorpion God

Three short novels show Golding at his subtle, ironic, mysterious best. The Scorpion God depicts a challenge to primal authority as the god ruler of an ancient civilization lingers near death. Clonk Clonk is a graphic account of a crippled youth’s triumph over his tormentors in a primitive matriarchal society. Envoy Extraordinary is a tale of Imperial Rome where the emperor loves his illegitimate son more than his own arrogant, loutish heir.

Related Authors

Leave a Comment