<p><b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER<br><br>An<i> Atlantic Magazine</i> Best Book of the Year<br>A <i>Publishers Weekly</i> Best Book of the Year<br></b><br><b>“The Melrose Novels are a masterwork for the twenty-first century, written by one of the great prose stylists in England.” —Alice Sebold, author of<i>The Lovely Bones</i></b><br><br>For more than twenty years, acclaimed author Edward St. Aubyn has chronicled the life of Patrick Melrose, painting an extraordinary portrait of the beleaguered and self-loathing world of privilege. This single volume collects the first four novels—<i>Never Mind</i>, <i>Bad News</i>, <i>Some Hope</i>, and <i>Mother’s Milk</i>, a Man Booker finalist—to coincide with the publication of<i>At Last</i>, the final installment of this unique novel cycle.</p><p>By turns harrowing and hilarious, these beautifully written novels dissect the English upper class as we follow Patrick Melrose’s story from child abuse to heroin addiction and recovery.<i>Never Mind</i>, the first novel, unfolds over a day and an evening at the family’s chateaux in the south of France, where the sadistic and terrifying figure of David Melrose dominates the lives of his five-year-old son, Patrick, and his rich and unhappy American mother, Eleanor. From abuse to addiction, the second novel, <i>Bad News</i> opens as the twenty-two-year-old Patrick sets off to collect his father’s ashes from New York, where he will spend a drug-crazed twenty-four hours. And back in England, the third novel, <i>Some Hope</i>, offers a sober and clean Patrick the possibility of recovery. The fourth novel, the Booker-shortlisted<i>Mother’s Milk</i>, returns to the family chateau, where Patrick, now married and a father himself, struggles with child rearing, adultery, his mother’s desire for assisted suicide, and the loss of the family home to a New Age foundation.</p><p>Edward St. Aubyn offers a window into a world of utter decadence, amorality, greed, snobbery, and cruelty—welcome to the declining British aristocracy.</p>