Fiction > English Fiction

Jeff Atman, a journalist, is in Venice to cover the opening of the Biennale. He's expecting to see a load of art, go to a lot of parties and drink too many bellinis. He's not expecting to meet the spell-binding Laura, who will completely transform his few days in the city. Another city, another assignment: this time on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi. Amid the crowds, ghats and chaos of India's holiest Hindu city, a different kind of transformation lies in wait. A beautifully told story of erotic love and spiritual yearning, Je... read more

Simon and Flora Beaufort have three perfect children and a comfortable, happy life in London. When Flora takes the children for a month-long vacation in France, Simon stays home to work on his latest film project. What could go wrong? A Pure Clear Light examines a marriage at the moment it goes haplessly off-track: Simon succumbs to the temptation of his cool, blonde accountant and Flora heeds the cry of her reawakened faith. Ultimately, though, neither Simon nor Flora can escape the revelation that lies beyond excuses and remorse ... read more

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Patrick Oxtoby is an outsider longing to fit in. Patrick struggles to make friends. He can't shake the feeling that his acquaintances are conspiring against him, fracturing his fragile personality and prompting him to take a course of action that alters his life. A mesmerizing portrait of a man whose unease in the world leads to his tragic undoing.

Helen Slavin brought the afterlife to life in her funny, quirky first novel, The Extra Large Medium. With The Stopping Place she takes her delicious observational humour into darker and more mysterious territory, with the harrowing story of a woman whose past has made her try to become invisible. Ruby works in shelving at the library. She likes it that she is almost invisible. Although people don't notice her, she knows everything about them. She eavesdrops on chatty Mrs Milligan and the fastidious Mrs Atkinson; she especially love... read more

When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of the End of Mr.Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can't believe her eyes. She's read about this author before, the outlandish Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas and this is his most notorious, and rarest book.A book... The End of Mr Y A heroine... Ariel Manto, perpetual PhD candidate (impoverished) A curse... mysterious deaths & disappearances A portal... into psychokinetic metaspace A race

A timeless tale of folly and the pursuit of love, set against the incendiary politics of our time The message was short. 'I want to see you now. I want you to come to me, it doesn't matter how late it is, and tell me exactly what you want from me.' Like the world around him, at the dawn of the twenty-first century Adam Kellas's life is showing distinct signs of cracking apart. Against his better judgement, Kellas – divorced, unstable, spurned by his lover and by the world of letters â€Â... read more

Sarajevo. As the mortars fall and the snipers conduct their deadly chess manoeuvres, a cellist sits at his window. The piece he plays, Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor, is all that restores his hope, at least for a time.

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A big shabby Victorian suburban house, the smell of raincoats and coq au vin in the hall, the six mugs for the children slung from the kitchen dresser hooks: for destructive Paul, difficult Gina, elegant Sandra, considerate Katie, clever Roger and flighty Clare, Allersmead was the perfect place to grow up. But was it? Now grown-up and off in different directions, one by one the children return to Allersmead, to their home-making mother and aloof writer father and a house that for years has played silent witness to the secrets of a ... read more

Curmudgeonly, acute, and funny, this book is what happens when grumpy old women meet Bridget Jones. "Bookclub people always seem to have to wade through Captain Corelli's Mandolin or, groan,The God of Small Things. They feel they've forever got to poke their brain with a pointed stick to keep it working. But either you've got a lively brain or you haven't. And anyway, I don't want to be young and stimulated any more. Those oldies who spend their lives bicycling across Mongolia at eighty and para-gliding at ninety, aren't brillia... read more

England, 1914. Alec Marquand, starting out on a career in archaeology, visits a remote Scottish island. Here he encounters a mysterious and beautiful young woman who intrigues and bewitches him. But Fate intervenes with the outbreak of the First World War. Alec knows enough about human history to believe that war is folly, but despite his conscientious-objector status, he is pressed into the King

By all accounts Mark d'Arbanville has the 'perfect life': a successful writer, he is happily married with a teenage son. But when he falls in love with another woman, Mark's life unravels, exposing regret, estrangement and heartache.Yet as his marriage falls apart Mark still can't let go. Nor can his lover, Anna, who won't leave her husband. When Mark finally does make the break, the effect is catastrophic - his wife commits suicide. The circuit breaker comes when Mark finds his dead wife's journals, and in their pages discovers a ... read more

This beautifully illustrated volume contains the journal of "Weed" - an orphan boy who is apprenticed to an evil old apothecary, who uses him abysmally. The apothecary also sells poisons, which are planted in a walled garden. Weed's journal is part botanical workbook and part a diary of his own relationship with the poisonous plants, for he discovers that he is one of a few people with whom the plants can talk. The plants try to persuade Weed that with their help his master can easily be disposed of. It also becomes apparent that s... read more

Here are Alan Bennett's four hugely admired, triumphantly reviewed and bestselling stories, brought together in one book for the first timeFather! Father! Burning Bright, the savage satire on a dying man's family reaction as he still asserts control over them from the hospital bed.The Clothes They Stood Up In, the painful story of what happens to an elderly couple when their flat is stripped completely bare.The Laying on of Hands, a memorial service for a masseur to the famous that goes horribly wrong.The Lady in the Van, the true ... read more

Lynne Truss's first novel. With it she joined the ranks of the very best writers 'It was nobody's fault, this widely held assumption that Come Into the Garden had long since sought eternal peace in the great magazine rack in the sky. Nevertheless, it required strength of character for those intimately acquainted with the title not to take the comments personally. After all, it was a bit like being dead but not lying down.'Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist mysteriously attractive to women, writes a regular celebrity interv... read more

The alternative I Don't Know How She Does It, from the author of the international #1 bestseller, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.Belinda Johansson is a woman frantic, overwhelmed by the demands of work and home. Having it all? Pah. Belinda doesn

Who is Aurora? Every time she becomes a new Mrs (three times when we last counted) she becomes a new woman. Her stepmother thinks Aurora is impractical, romantic and dreamy. The fact that she gets married so often only goes to prove it. 'Every woman owes it to herself to get married once, but you don't have to make a habit of it.' But now, all alone...? 'Aurora, given the chance to be true to herself, rather than to her trio of husbands, turns out to be a world-class minx. After Hugh's funeral, she goes to Italy to visit her old ra... read more

After months away, Emily returns to London and to a family on the verge of disintegration. She spends nights in cramped bars, drinking and smoking with her beautiful but damaged boyfriend Tom and his friends. It is a lifestyle the leaves her feeling directionless and jaded. In her search to believe in something or someone, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Simon, Tom's complex and charming cousin. But Simon is married, and as he and Emily become closer and the summer draws to an end they are forced to make decisions that wi... read more

Set in and around the women's prison at Milbank in the 1870's, Affinity is an eerie and utterly compelling ghost story, a complex and intriguing literary mystery and a poignant love story with an unexpected twist in the tale.
Following the death of her father, Margaret Prior has decided to pursue some 'good work' with the lady criminals of one of London's most notorious gaols. Surrounded by prisoners, murderers and common thieves, Margaret feels herself drawn to one of the prisons more unlikely inmates - the imprisone... read more