Sally Bowles is the dazzling centrepiece of Goodbye to Berlin, distilling Isherwood's genius into the tale of one baudy, brilliant woman.

1930s Berlin is a realm of glamour and sleaze, poverty and excess. There, a lonely young Brit working on a novel is charmed by an English runaway and want-to-be star, the delightfully decadent Sally Bowles. The intimate, fleeting connection they form will stay with him for all his days.

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.