The Valley of the Bones

Anthony Powell�s universally acclaimed epic A Dance to the Music of Time offers a matchless panorama of twentieth-century London. Now, for the first time in decades, readers in the United States can read the books of Dance as they were originally published�as twelve individual novels�but with a twenty-first-century twist: they�re available only as e-books.World War II has finally broken out, and The Valley of Bones (1964) finds Nick Jenkins learning the military arts. A stint at a training academy in Wales introduces him to the many unusual characters the army has thrown together, from the ambitious bank clerk-turned-martinet, Gwatkin, to the hopelessly slovenly yet endearing washout, Bithel. Even during wartime, however, domestic life proceeds, as a pregnant Isobel nears her term and her siblings� romantic lives take unexpected turns�their affairs of the heart lent additional urgency by the ever-darkening shadow of war."Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."--Chicago Tribune"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."--Elizabeth Janeway, New York Times"One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."--Naomi Bliven, New Yorker�The most brilliant and penetrating novelist we have.�--Kingsley Amis