Those of us who have already discovered Stephen Fry know him as the brilliant British comedian behind TV series such as Jeeves & Wooster and Blackadder, and the author of two enormously funny novels, The Liar and The Hippopotamus. But his new film (in which he plays Oscar Wilde) and his new novel (this one) represent a somewhat alarming departure from his previous work: They're more serious. Though humor is still an essential ingredient of both, Fry's fans are finally getting to witness the emotional depth that this brilliant polymath usually keeps hidden. In Making History, Fry has bitten off a rather meaty chunk by tackling an at first deceptively simple premise: What if Hitler had never been born? An unquestionable improvement, one would reason--and so an earnest history grad student and an aging German physicist idealistically undertake to bring this about by preventing Adolf's conception. And with their success is launched a brave new world that is in some ways better than ours--but in most ways even worse. Fry's experiment in history makes for his most ambitious novel yet, and his most affecting. His first book to be set mostly in America, it is a thriller with a funny streak, a futuristic fantasy based on one of mankind's darkest realities. It is, in every sense, a story of our times. "From the Hardcover edition.

"A number one bestseller in Britain, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action. Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar, and now he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction and imprisonment to emerge, at the age of eighteen, ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy and real devotion"--

Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel is by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic. Adrian Healey loves to lie. He does it all the time. Every minute, every moment. And worse, he does it wonderfully, imaginatively, brilliantly. He lies to buck the system, to express his contempt for convention, but mostly because he just plain likes to. It's fun; it's high camp. He invents a lost pornographic novel by Charles Dickens, and for himself a career as a Piccadilly rent boy hireable by the hour. But Adrian's lies eventually bring realworld danger, as he finds himself caught up in the machinations of a shadowy network that puts his own life at risk. A dazzling, outrageous first novel that has delighted liars everywhere.

Adrian Healey loves to lie. He lies all the time. Every minute, every moment. Worse, he does it wonderfully, imaginatively, brilliantly. He lies to buck the System, to express his contempt for convention, but mostly because he just plain likes to. It's fun, and so much more challenging. It is high camp. One creates when one prevaricates. "Doesn't everyone think the way I think?" says Adrian of his various inventions. Like the pornographic novel by Charles Dickens, his career as a Piccadilly "rent-boy" hireable by the hour, his stressful work as a drug "mule" smuggling illegal substances. He has (as his Cambridge tutor observed) "a fine brain, but a dreadful mind." Already in his public school career, marked by privilege and pederasty, he had lost the ability to differentiate between simple truth and his elaborate fictions. The Liar is as wicked and witty, as unspeakably (and unquotably) funny as its protagonist narrator - and as irresistible as its multi-talented author, Stephen Fry. Mr. Fry's credits grow daily. He is the star of a film entitled Peter's Friends, and of Masterpiece Theater's television series Jeeves and Wooster. He is half of the Fry and Laurie comedy team, he has written a play called Latin and the book for the musical Me and My Girl, and he is a weekly columnist for the London Daily Telgraph. He is also now the author of the #1 English bestseller, The Liar, which spent several months at the very top position on the British charts. In the literary firmament it has been identified as somewhere between Oscar Wilde and Saki.

A hilarious collection of the many articles written by Stephen Fry for magazines, newspapers and radio. It includes selected wireless essays of Donald Trefusis, the ageing professor of philology brought to life in Fry's novel The Liar , and the best of Fry's weekly column for the Daily Telegraph . Perfect to dip into but just as enjoyable to read cover to cover, this book, perhaps more than any other, shows the breadth of Fry's interests and the depth of his insight. He remains a hilarious writer on whatever topic he puts his mind to.

"We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and --bandied/Which way please them." ----The Duchess of Malfi --by John Webster Everything about Stephen Fry's new novel, including the title, will be a surprise, perhaps even a shock. The only thing that can be guaranteed is that it will be his next earth-movingly funny bestseller. And we are still pretty confidently saying it will not be about earthworm migration patterns in East Devon. This is the story of Ned Maddenstone, a nice young man who is about to find out just what hell it is to be one of the stars' tennis balls. For Ned, 1978 seems a blissful year: handsome, popular, responsible and a fine cricketer, life is progressing smoothly for him, if not effortlessly. When he meets Portia Fendeman his personal jigsaw appears complete. What if her left-wing parents despise his Tory MP father? Doesn't that just make them star-crossed lovers? And surely, in the end, won't the Fendemans be won over by their happiness? But, of course, one person's happiness is another's jealous spite. And spite is about to change Ned's life forever. A promise made to a dying teacher and a vile trick played by fellow pupils rocket Ned from cricket captain to solitary confinement, from head boy to political prisoner. Twenty years later, Ned returns to London a very different man from the boy seized outside a Knightsbridge language college. A man implacably focused on revenge. Revenge is a dish he plans to savour and serve to those who conspired against him, and to those who forgot him.