Contemporary Fiction Books

Book SynopsisPatrick Doyle is a twenty-nine-year-old teacher in an ordinary comprehensive school. Isolated, frustrated and increasingly bitter at the system he is employed to maintain, he begins his rebellion, fuelled by drink and his passionate, unrequited love for a fellow teacher.Trade ReviewWith this novel James Kelman reveals a talent so huge in today's terms that one is tempted to mention Zola and Beckett * Independent *His style is endlessly inventive, his characters have huge souls and his point of view is uncompromising. If people don't start listening, they only have themselves to blame * Observer *Kelman has artistry, authenticity and a voice of singular power. A Disaffection leaves one reassured and indeed optimistic about the state of British literature today. * Independent *

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Book SynopsisJunichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past.All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.Trade ReviewThe outstanding Japanese novelist of this century -- Edmund White

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Book SynopsisEquipped with love, Mr Harold Pye lands on the island of Sark, his mission to convert the islanders into a crusading force for the undiluted goodness that he feels within. The extraordinary inhabitants of the island range from the formidable Miss George in her purple busby to the wanton, raven-haired Tintagieu, ''five foot three inches of sex''. Mr Pye, however, is prone to excess and in the increasingly personalised struggle between good and evil, excess is very nearly his downfall.Trade ReviewThe novel gives a clear sense of Sark as somewhere both remarkable and beautiful. * The Guardian *I am delighted to meet you,' trills Mr Pye to a fisherman. 'Are you, eh, you fat little porker,' the thug replies. 'B- you. * - *Peake has been praised, but he has also been mistrusted," observed Anthony Burgess in his introduction to Titus Groan . "His prose works are not easily classifiable: they are unique as, say, the books of Peacock or Lovecraft are unique . . . It is difficult, in postwar English writing, to get away with big rhetorical gestures. Peake manages it because, with him, grandiloquence never means diffuseness; there is no musical emptiness in the most romantic of his descriptions; he is always exact. * Anthony Burgess *The fable is cleverly and gracefully resolved and the final scenes are a joy to read. Peake's illustrations complement the novel very well and these, too, are examples of his charm, of his enormous illustrative range. * Washington Post *

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Book SynopsisJunichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past.All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.Trade ReviewA chilling climax. Tanizaki is a master of ambiguity in his own language and the subtle flavour of the work is skilfully preserved in this translation * The Times *One of Japan's most popular writers in this century. In this and his other books, he pulls aside the shoji that screens Japanese home life to eavesdrop on what people are really saying and thinking behind their polite facades * New York Times *It is important that the British public should become acquainted with this great twentieth-century Japanese fiction writer -- Anthony Burgess

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Book SynopsisIn the English town of Ennistone, hot springs bubble up from deep beneath the earth. In these healing waters the townspeople seek health and regeneration, rightousness and ritual cleansing. To this town steeped in ancient lore and subterranean inspiration the Philosopher returns. He exerts an almost magical influence over a host of Ennistonians, and especially over George McCaffrey, the Philosopher''s old pupil, a demonic man desperate for redemption.Trade ReviewMarvellous.. Compulsive reading, hugely funny * Spectator *We are back, of course, with great delight, in the land of Iris Murdoch, which is like no other but Prospero's * Sunday Telegraph *The most daring and original of all her novels -- A. N. WilsonNever for a moment does one want to stop reading... I don't think Iris Murdoch has ever written better prose * Daily Telegraph *Ambitious, unique and ingeniously plotted -- Joyce Carol Oates * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisTo enter the world of Ben Okri''s stories is to surrender to a new reality. Set in the chaotic streets of Lagos and the jungle heart of Nigeria, all the laws of cause and effect, fact and fiction, are suspended. It is a world where the lives of the powerless veer terrifyingly close to nightmare. In rich, lyrical, almost hallucinatory prose Ben Okri guides us through the fabulous and the mundane, the serene and the randomly violent. The unrelenting Nigerian heat and the implacable darkness of the black-out and the military curfew are the backdrops for his characters each finding their own ways to survive. We witness their dogged resistance to impotence, their unquenchable humour and their insistence on the possibility of love in the face of terror. Written with the lucid clarity and logic of dream, Stars of the New Curfew is a book of visionary imagination.Trade ReviewAnother piercing collection of short stories... Masterful * Time Out *There are many novelists who write as well as Ben Okri, many who share his gift for recreating the texture of everyday life, many who can cut through the surface to expose, as he does, the myths of our elders and betters use to keep us in our place. There are very few novelists who can do all three. The fact that Ben Okri has done so in short stories, without ever losing his balance, his humour or his edge, makes his accomplishment all the more exceptional * Observer *In a few brief sentences Ben Okri captures the arrogance and faceless indifference of the military forces which patrol the margins of these stories * Independent *Stamped with the ease of a truly original imagination -- Wole Soyinka

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Book SynopsisIn 1779, driven out of his home, Calum MacDonald sets sail from the Scottish Highlands with his extensive family. After a long, terrible journey he settles his family in ''the land of trees'', and eventually they become a separate Nova Scotian clan: red-haired and black-eyed, with its own identity, its own history.It is the 1980s by the time our narrator, Alexander MacDonald, tells the story of his family, a thrilling and passionate story that intersects with history: with Culloden, where the clans died, and with the 1759 battle at Quebec that was won when General Wolfe sent in the fierce Highlanders because it was ''no great mischief if they fall''.Trade ReviewYou will find scenes from this majestic novel burned into your mind forever -- Alice MunroOne of the great undiscovered writers of our time -- Michael OndaatjeThe novel is close to being a masterpiece. The characters, the light and the weather, the story itself - its beautiful tone and shape, its harsh and melancholy music - stay with you for days afterwards. The novel is simply breathtaking in its emotional range -- Colm Toibin * Irish Times *Exceptional... The book is pervaded by the humour and colour; intensely vivid, and very, very moving * Independent *Alistair MacLeod is a wonderfully talented writer -- Margaret Atwood

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Book SynopsisAnne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has written two collections of stories, published together as Yesterday's Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and seven novels, including The Gathering, which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, which was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and The Green Road, which was the Bord Gáis Energy Novel of the Year and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. In 2015 she was appointed as the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, and in 2018 she received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature. She is also the recipient of the 2022 Irish Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2024 Writers' Prize for Fiction.Trade Review'Hauntingly told' * Sunday Times *'Anne Enright is a very original writer - a spry surrealist who challenges the world with extraordinary, lancing sentences...so intelligent and so controlled' -- James Wood * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisA terrifying ghost story by the bestselling author of The Woman in Black.One dark and rainy night, Sir James Monmouth returns to London after years spent travelling alone. Intent on uncovering the secrets of his childhood hero, the mysterious Conrad Vane, he begins to investigate Vane's life, but he finds himself warned off at every turn. Before long he realises he is being followed too. A pale, thin boy is haunting his every step but every time he tries to confront the boy he disappears. And what of the chilling scream and desperate sobbing only he can hear? His quest leads him eventually to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, where he discovers something far more terrible at work than he could ever have imagined.Thoroughly frightening' Daily TelegraphChills the blood' The TimesTrade ReviewThoroughly frightening * Daily Telegraph *Chills the blood * The Times *Reader beware. When you turn the last page of Susan Hill’s ghost story, you do not just close the book but emerge with an icy shiver * Daily Mail *Psychologically astute and disturbing in its ambiguities, its impossible to resist the manipulative power of this finely constructed tale * Financial Times *Chock-full of dimness, murk, moonlight, mystification and melancholy * Independent *

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Book SynopsisThe dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility tetraology.It is the 1960s and Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru. Honda believes that the boy is the reincarnation of the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises and educates the boy, he makes him his heir, and watches him, waiting. But Toru is also watching Honda...''A surpassingly chilling, subtle and original novel'' New York Times''Mishima''s ritualistic suicide in 1970 will always overshadow his work, but his dark saga of 20th-century Japan is mesmerising'' Guardian Trade ReviewA major literary creation * New York Times *This tetralogy is considered one of Yukio Mishima's greatest works. It could also be considered a catalogue of Mishima's obsessions with death, sexuality and the samurai ethic. Spanning much of the 20th century, the tetralogy begins in 1912 when Shigekuni Honda is a young man and ends in the 1960s with Honda old and unable to distinguish reality from illusion. En route, the books chronicle the changes in Japan that meant the devaluation of the samurai tradition and the waning of the aristocracy * Washington Post *One of the great writers of the twentieth century * Los Angeles Times *Japan's foremost man of letters * Spectator *Mishima's novels exude a monstrous and compulsive weirdness, and seem to take place in a kind of purgatory for the depraved -- Angela Carter

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Book SynopsisDark, erudite and like An Instance of the Fingerpost, utterly compelling, The Dream of Scipio confirms Iain Pears as one of Britain''s most imaginative novelistsSet in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth - The Dream of Scipio follows the fortunes of three men: Manlius Hippomanes, a Gallic aristocrat obsessed with the preservation of Roman civilisation, Olivier de Noyen, a poet, and Julien Barneuve, an intellectual who joins the Vichy government. The story of each man is woven through the narrative, linked by the classical text that gives the book its title, and by each man''s love for an extraordinary woman. Irresistibly seizes the imagination' Evening StandardTrade ReviewIrresistibly seizes the imagination * Evening Standard *Combining the visceral pleasures of a thriller with the more intellectual excitements of a novel of ideas... Beautifully constructed...never less than engrossing * Sunday Telegraph *Vivid, admirably imagined, ultimately very moving...This is a novel of the very highest ambition...immediate, sensuous, beautiful -- Alan Massie * Scotsman *Combines dazzling erudition with assured narrative skills to offer glimpses of some of history's darkest corners, and stark and timely challenges to the very notions of civilisation and progress * Independent on Sunday *A dazzling hall of mirrors... Ferociously ambitious... Illumined by a fizzing passion for the recondite * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisOn a promontory jutting out into the Atlantic wind stands the Home run by Brother Benedict, where boys are taught a little of God and a lot of fear. But as the outside world closes in around them - as time, money and opportunity run out - Michael finds himself moving towards a solution that is as uncompromising as it is inspired by love.Trade ReviewA first novel of integrity and power * Times Literary Supplement *The alert and feeling realism of MacLaverty's story...had a rare purity of intention and texture... a deeply humane first novel * Guardian *To deal convincingly with innocence and the impossibility of innocence without being falsely naive...is a special gift, and Bernard MacLaverty displays it with great skill * Observer *A performance of great assurance and tenderness * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisAn unsettling and absorbing tale from the bestselling author of The Woman in Black.Celibate, irreproachable and distinguished, Thomas Cavendish is in his mid-fifties and the obvious man to become Master of his college. But, walking by the river, Thomas sees a young girl standing on the bridge. It is an apocalyptic vision, one that alters Thomas''s life irrevocably and tragically, but with the beauty and joy of a love never previously imagined.As light as a feather but as powerful as flight' ObserverTrade ReviewElegant and highly stylised...the prose has a lulling, rolling cadence * Guardian *Subtle and profoundly beautiful * Scotsman *Hill breaks all the rules of British irony and gets away with it, thanks in part to her obsessive imagination * Independent *Subtle and profoundly moving, this novel is rich in the qualities for which Hill has won such high praise in the past * Sunday Times *As light as a feather but as powerful as flight * Observer *

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Book SynopsisA band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.Trade ReviewMishima's greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century * The Times *Explores the viciousness that lies beneath what we imagine to be innocence * Independent *Told with Mishima's fierce attention to naturalistic detail, the grisly tale becomes painfully convincing and yields a richness of psychological and mythic truth * Sunday Times *Coolly exact with his characters and their honourable motives. His aim is to make the destruction of the sailor by his love seem as inevitable as the ocean * Guardian *Mishima's imagery is as artful as a Japanese flower arrangement * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisWilliam Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and short story writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, which was followed by seven more collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook.In 1927 Somerset MaTrade ReviewOne of my favourite writers -- Gabriel Garcia MarquezA formidable talent, a formidable sum of talents...precision, tact, irony and total absence of pomposity * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisPoignant and challenging...A love story, yet with an ambition and sweep that make it much more than that...subtle, complex, unsparing and profound' Daily TelegraphAustin Smith, a middle aged American, works out in a Paris gym - an ordinary day, except that he catches the eye of a stranger, Julien, a young French architect with a gleam in his eye. To Austin''s amused astonishment, life takes on the colour of romance. As they dash between Bohemian suppers and glittering salons, they deal with comic clashes of cultures, of ages, of temperaments. But there is sadness in Julien''s past and a grim cloud on the horizon. Soon, with increasing desperation, their quest for health and happiness drives them to Rome, Venice, Key West, Montreal and Providence - landscapes soaked with feeling which lead, in the end to the bleak, baking sands of the Sahara where their love is pushed to its ultimate crisis.Trade ReviewWritten with the characteristic brilliance and the particular flair for poetic detail that so distinguishes his books, Edmund White's new novel is arguably his best to date... Heartbreakingly beautiful prose, so elegantly achieved it has the ring of a master...marvellously life-affirming... In short, nothing less than brilliant * The Times *A superb novel * Evening Standard *Undoubtedly one of his best novels. The prose is lyrical...writing that is truly supple, adapting itself to comedy or tragedy as required * Sunday Times *The Married Man is Edmund White at his quintessential best * Sunday Telegraph *Poignant and challenging... Candid and often painfully personal... A love story, yet with an ambition and sweep that make it much more than that...subtle, complex, unsparing and profound * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisJunichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past.All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.Trade ReviewWonderful -- Hanif Kureshi * Independent *His work is unclassifiable: by turns outre and dignified, passionate in its embrace of all things Western and eloquent in its memorializing of the traditional Japanese aesthetic, lightly comic, lyrically evocative and savagely cruel. In a land reputedly inhospitable to the individualist, it demands attention and has earned Tanizaki an undisputed place in the pantheon of 20th-century Japanese literature. * New York Times *An artistic masterpiece * Irish Times *A writer of wicked subtlety and grace * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisIris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.Trade ReviewThe most important novelist writing in my time * A.S. Byatt *A distinguished novelist of a very rare kind * Kingsley Amis *Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable-behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY STEPHEN MEDCALFWhen Marian Taylor takes the post of governess at Gaze castle, remote house on a beautiful but desolate coast, she finds herself confronted with many strange mysteries. What kind of crime or catastrophe in the past still keeps the house under a brooding spell? And is her employer Hannah an innocent victim, a guilty woman, a lunatic, or a witch?Trade ReviewThe Unicorn explores Murdoch's theme that life is - or should be - a spiritual quest or pilgrimage * Guardian *A writer of wonderful, and sometimes rather alarming idiosyncrasy; from her first novels, she explored a parish which was uniquely and unmistakably hers. But, somehow, by pursuing her desire only to be herself, she made it possible for generations of novelists after her to be more themselves. * Independent *Every novel is imprinted with the same distinctive, magical and wonderfully inventive imagination... A humour and humanity marked her fictional writing and made it a rich, wonderful and varied discourse. She filled it with strong emotions, powerful passions, very human experiences, humour * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisMartin believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendour at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. How will he survive it?Trade ReviewThis is a comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement -- Elizabeth Jane HowardOf all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable...behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist * Sunday Times *Immensely readable...Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply -- Philip Toynbee

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Book SynopsisIris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.Trade ReviewManipulating masterfully, Miss Murdoch turns out a deft three-in-one book: a sort of combined superior soap opera… a British novel of sensibility, and philosophical inquiry into reality * Time *I suspect that when the intellectual map of our own times comes to be sketched out, Iris Murdoch will occupy a position analogous to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky... Murdoch writes better than anyone about the condition of being love: both the ecstatic joys of it and its capacity to turn otherwise decent individuals into monsters of selfishness and cruelty... Her vision of the world is heart-rending, but ultimately celebratory -- A N Wilson

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Book SynopsisIn the topsy-turvy years between the dawn of the twentieth century and the dark days of 1939, the Moskat family battled on. But like many Jewish families in Poland they can no longer turn a blind eye to the dwindling of their fortunes. In Warsaw, where saints mingle with swindlers, tough Zionists argue with mystic philosophers, and medieval rabbis rub shoulders with ultra-modern painters, life is inexorably changing. Secularism and war inch nearer and the family Moskat clings on.Trade ReviewA masterpiece, a triumph of realism, precisely finished, exactly located, a miraculous marriage of accuracy and imagination * Sunday Times *A loving and detailed portrait of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. * Globe & Mail *His greatest work. -- Ian Samson * Guardian '1000 novels everyone must read' *Whatever region his writing inhabits, it is blazing with life and actuality -- New York Review of Books * Ted Hughes *He makes most contemporary practitioners of the art of fiction look like singers with only one song * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisMohawk, New York, is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Its citizens, too, have fallen on hard times. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his schoolwork - because in a place like Mohawk it doesn''t pay to be smart.Mohawk chronicles over a dozen lives in a decaying leather town in upstate New York. It is a picture of life which is true for the whole world, and once viewed, will never be forgotten.Trade ReviewRusso's natural grace as a storyteller is matched by his compassion for his characters. Mohawk is lively reading; it is a painful story, yet it is told with great mischief - and the triumphs and the tragedies of the characters are enhanced as victories and defeats always are, by wit -- John IrvingRusso writes with sensitivity and insight * Irish Times *Immensely readable and sympathetic... Mr Russo has an instinctive gift for capturing the rhythms of small-time life * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisGraham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.Trade ReviewGraham Greene taught us to understand the social and economic cripples in our midst. He taught us to look at each other with new eyes. I don't suppose his influence will ever disappear -- Auberon Waugh * Independent *A masterly storyteller... An enormously popular writer who was also one of the most significant novelists of his time * Newsweek *Graham Greene had wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature -- John Le Carre

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Book SynopsisGraham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.Trade Review'In a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-centuryman's consciousness and anxiety' William Golding'The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings...the tragic and comic ironies of love, loyalty and belief' -- V. S. Pritchett * The Times *'A superb storyteller...he had a talent for depicting local colour, a keen sense of the dramatic, and eye for dialogue, and skill in pacing his prose' * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisFrom the bestselling author of Star of the Sea and Shadowplay, ''a powerful, moving adventure of raw fate and betrayed love'' (Independent on Sunday).Inspector Martin Aitken''s life is a mess. He''s divorced, his career''s in chaos, and the last thing he needs this Christmas Eve is a strange woman collapsed on a Dublin street. Ellen Donnelly is a woman on a mission, coming to Ireland to find her mother and escape her marriage. Dr Milton Amery, a New York plastic surgeon, is her unfaithful husband. The three are beginning new journeys, each of which lead to Inishowen.''A page-turner, full of compassion, laughter and zest for the human condition'' Irish Times''Tremendous... A love story, a realistic thriller and an account of grief and loss'' SpectatorTrade ReviewA powerful, moving adventure of raw fate and betrayed love * Independent on Sunday *This is a tremendous book, affecting, intelligent, ironic, humane and utterly convincing. It is also extremely funny * Spectator *Inishowen is a vast page-turner, full of compassion, laughter and zest for the human condition, as well as a rattling good story * Irish Times *O'Connor is an enviably talented writer... A very fine novelist * Glasgow Herald *Ireland's most versatile writer... His storytelling is masterful, and his characters are real and vibrant... A sombre, often heartbreaking story... O'Connor conducts his bittersweet symphony with humour, sensitivity and immense style * Independent on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisThis is the story of Arno Strine, a modest temporary typist, who has perfected the knack of stopping time in its tracks and taking women''s clothes off. He is hard at work on his autobiography, The Fermata, which proves in the telling to be a very provocative, very funny and altogether morally confused piece of work. Hilarious and totally original, Nicholson Baker''s new novel is a triumphant comedy about sexual fantasy and fantastic sexuality.Trade ReviewLots of nakedness, quite a few surprises. His novels have the brazen, daring timidity of love letters you know you'll never post * Sunday Times *The book is bursting with sex and beauty, wound together profoundly and pornographically. It is bountifully Rabelasisan and intensely refined. I have never read anything quite like it. Misogynists will definitely not like The Fermata; there is not one iota of violence towards or contempt for women in this book. Wildly exhilarating and confirming. The Fermata should be celebrated -- Mary GaitskillWitty, dry and thought-provoking, a great addition to Baker's unique observatory of contemporary life * Vogue *

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Book SynopsisJulia Lambert is in her prime, the greatest actress in England. Off stage, however, she is bored with her handsome husband, coquettish and undisciplined. She is at first flattered and amused by the attentions of a shy and eager young fan, but before long Julia is amazed to find herself falling wildly, dangerously, in love.Trade ReviewBrilliant. Sheer, unmatched skill which would fill any novelist with envy * Chicago Tribune *Theatre is a brilliantly executed novel * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisWilliam Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to literature. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965Trade ReviewReveals many of Maugham's strengths: an understanding of women, meticulous craftsmanship and raw emotion' * Daily Mail *A work of art * Spectator *An expert craftsman... His style is sharp, quick, subdued, casual * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisIt is 1970 in the suburbs of north London and, from the untidy comfort of her crowded house, Colette Jones is watching her older brother go to pieces, drinking himself into oblivion on home-made wine. Colette knows the solace a drink can provide, being partial to an evening at the Red Lion herself. But soon she finds she cannot afford to ignore the destructive effect that alcohol is having on her family, and with gritted teeth Colette is forced to exile the alcoholic son she loves so much from the house. But this act takes its toll and, just as she can''t resist a drink, so she can''t resist allowing Janus back into her life - with heartbreaking consequences for everyone.Gerard Woodward''s magnificent second novel continues the story of the Joneses, so memorably introduced in August. By way of an odyssey through the pubs, parks and shopping parades of suburban London, it lurches from farce to tragedy as the members of one unforgettable family build and destroy their lTrade ReviewThe narrative is mind-bogglingly crisp, resourceful and sometimes hilarious in its description of the myriad ways in which people drink... This is both a moral and a literary book... Remarkable * Sunday Times *This is a novel where the characters seem like friends and family. It's a fine achievement -- Blake Morrison * Guardian *The funniest sad book you'll read all year * The Times *A painfully funny, beautifully written account of a wayward family falling like dominoes to the demon drink -- Rowan PellingFar above the ordinary. Woodward's characters are wonderfully complex and rich * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisThis collection of playful, deadly febles is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. The grimly comic story The Argentine Ant moved Gore Vidal to declare ''if this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better''.Trade ReviewItalo Calvino's Adam, One Afternoon confirms the part he has played in revitalising the art of fiction in our time. In these beautifully translated stories, the quality of the writing emerges as clearly as do the ease and range of his inventiveness. Calvino's special gift is to link the physical and immediate with an allegorical timelessness-All the characters and creatures in these stories conspire to convey a feeling of the wonder, mystery and terror of life * Guardian *Calvino's strength is his economy and subtlety. The best of his allegorical fantasies have the power of the Brothers Grimm, rollicking stories on the surface, with an underlying savagery * Listener *

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Book SynopsisThis classic collection of stories moves from England, France and Spain to the silver sands of the South Pacific. It includes the famous story ''Rain'', the tragedy of a narrow-minded and overzealous missionary and a prostitute, and ''The Three Fat Women of Antibes,'' an extravagantly sardonic tale of abstention and greed, as well as a host of other brilliant tales.Trade ReviewFascinating tales, sharply revealed characters, a fine narrative craft -- J.B. PriestleyHe was a superb storyteller - one of the very best in our language - who wrote with a wordly, sardonic understanding of the human condition. Writing was his life; everything else was secondary to it * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisFor more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in his traditional home village lives the humble, loyal wife his family chose for him years ago. Every summer, he returns to ask her for a divorce and every summer his compliant wife agrees but then backs out. This time, after eighteen years'' waiting, Lin promises it will be different.Trade ReviewBeautiful and compelling * Daily Mail *Dreamy and beautifully written... Reading it will take you into a different world altogether * Marie Claire *A deliciously comic novel * The Times *Imagine if Romeo and Juliet had been made to stretch out their passion for 18 years, without consummating their love. Now imagine them in China during the crazy bureaucracy of Mao's Cultural Revolution, unable to talk in private let alone kiss...the insights into Chinese culture and the complexities of human longing are beautiful and compelling * Daily Mail *A classic folktale...an extraordinary novel * Independent *

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Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. N. WILSONThroughout these seventy-nine stories - love stories, ghost stories, stories of childhood, of English middle-class life in the twenties and thirties, of London during the Blitz - Elizabeth Bowen combines social comedy and reportage, perception and vision in an oeuvre which reveals, as Angus Wilson affirms in his introduction, that ''the instinctive artist is there at the very heart of her work''.Trade ReviewBowen's stories show the awesome capabilities of the English language and the surprise and mystery of the human soul * Anne Tyler *Bowen's stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them -- V.S. Pritchett * Vogue *

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and land-owner. She travelled a great deal, dividing most of her time between London and Bowen's Court, the family house in County Cork which she inherited. Her first book, a collection of shorts stories, Encounters, was published in 1923. The Hotel (1926) was her first novel. She was awarded the CBE in 1948, and received honorary degrees from Trinity College, Dublin in 1949, and from Oxford University in 1956. The Royal Society of Literature made her a Companion of Literature in 1965. Elizabeth Bowen died in 1973.Trade ReviewResonant, beautiful and often very funny... Eva is triumphantly real, a creation of great imaginative tenderness * Financial Times *Elizabeth Bowen was one of the handful of great English novelist of this century and must be ranked beside Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, and Ford Madox Ford -- Edmund White * Washington Post *Eva is the larger-than-life, some would say monstrous, culmination of a subject that haunted Bowen's work: the neglected, or misplaced, child * New York Times *I still remember the electrifying effect it had upon me when it was published in 1969. At various stages of life I have become almost possessed by it... The book shimmers with life in every paragraph -- A. N. Wilson * Daily Telegraph *A subtle, elusive novel making its mysterious way forward by side glances and half-gleams, by sudden small illuminations and half-hidden ironies, by a tenderness that is half-mocking and a mockery that is half-tender * Evening Standard *

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and land-owner. She travelled a great deal, dividing most of her time between London and Bowen's Court, the family house in County Cork which she inherited. Her first book, a collection of shorts stories, Encounters, was published in 1923. The Hotel (1926) was her first novel. She was awarded the CBE in 1948, and received honorary degrees from Trinity College, Dublin in 1949, and from Oxford University in 1956. The Royal Society of Literature made her a Companion of Literature in 1965. Elizabeth Bowen died in 1973.Trade ReviewTo the North and The Death of the Heart are among the finest novels of her generation -- V.S. PritchettA lavishness of imagination is brought to bear upon small moments, and the writing is of such intensity that a character is revealed in one expression, a way of life disclosed in a single scene -- Peter Ackroyd * Sunday Times *Haunting novels of bad faith and betrayal * Guardian *She startles us by sheer originality of mind and boldness of sensibility into seeking our world afresh...Out of the plainest things - the drawing of a curtain - she can make something electric and urgent -- V.S. Pritchett

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Book SynopsisAlice Munro was born in 1931 and was the author of thirteen collections of stories and the novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Who Do You Think You Are? (previously published as The Beggar Maid), and was awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage, and in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Alice Munro died in 2024.Trade ReviewMunro is at the height of her powers...a testimony to a great talent * Guardian *That Munro is a great writer of short stories should, by now, go without saying. She is also one of the two or three best writers of fiction (of any length) now alive. The title story of this collection is one of her masterpieces...a brilliant piece of story-telling, tautly-structured and exquisitely balanced * Sunday Times *A new collection of Alice Munro stories is a literary event that more and more of us look forward to, we are very unlikely to find a richer or rarer treat all year...the eight new stories in The Love of a Good Woman show this miraculous and truly great writer at the height of her powers...a perfect story collection * Scotland on Sunday *Alice Munro's stories...reward each pleasurable effort, as the best fiction always does...a Munro story has the depth and intricacy of a long novel, more than any other living writer in English...she can account for 20 years of a person's life in a single, telling paragraph, or even in a subtly placed phrase...The Love of a Good Woman is a superb, but unsettling, collection * Daily Telegraph *One of the finest short-story writers of our time...absorbing and brilliant * Observer *

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Book SynopsisIn 1837, two young African princes arrive at the court of Willem I in the Netherlands. They have been given to the Dutch by the King of the Ashanti as surety in a deal over illegal slave trading. The two boys think they have been sent to acquire a European education, but time passes. They forget their native language and become exiles. Treated as curiosities by white people, their friendship suffers and their paths diverge. Years later, as the twentieth century dawns, the elderly Kwasi, now owner of a coffee plantation in Java, sits down to write his autobiography. Based on a true story, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi is both a brilliant piece of storytelling and a moving portrayal of the search for identity and belonging.Trade ReviewBeautifully crafted and spellbinding * Daily Mail *A bravura rendering of historical detail... Japin's greatest accomplishment is the narrator's tone in which the voice of an embittered old man merges with that of a perceptive but scared and betrayed child * Independent on Sunday *An elegant and ultimately moving fictional reworking of another troubling chapter of Europeans in Africa and Africans in Europe -- Caryl PhillipsMesmerising... Like Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, Japin's ventriloquism is virtually flawless * Time Out *A deeply humane book about a spectacularly exotic subject * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisSweeping from the gentler confines of late 1940s small town America to the tough side of the New York media circus in the ''70s, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! mines golden seams of goodness and gritty determination, prejudice and despair, love and survival, in the story of a young TV interviewer, Dena Nordstrom, whose future looks full of promise, whose present is an emotional mess, and whose past is marked by mystery. With a cast of unforgettable characters, from the comic masterpiece that is Neighbour Dorothy (broadcasting home tips and good news to the midwest from her own front room) to the monstrosity that is Ira Wallace, TV network head - Fannie Flagg''s novel is a funny, constantly surprising novel that keeps you guessing and turing the page right up to the last.Trade ReviewUtterly irresistible * Time *[Flagg] keeps it simple, she keeps it bright, she keeps it moving right along - and, most of all, she keeps it beloved * New York Times Book Review *Satisfying... [Flagg's] faith in the healing power of small towns and family is refreshing * People *

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Book SynopsisFrom the love affair between a missionary and a drunkard to the mystery surrounding a death at sea, this collection gives a warm and humourous insight into life and history of life in the colonies and stands as a superbly entertaining and compelling testament to Maugham''s skill and power as a short story writer.Trade ReviewMaugham teases out buried secrets as mesmerising as the heat and as menacing as the surrounding jungle * Observer *If all else perish, there will remain a storyteller's world...that is exclusively and forever Maugham, a world of verandah and prahu which we enter as well as we do that of Conan Doyle's Baker Street, and with a happy and eternal homecoming * The Times *Ideally you should listen to these stories lying in a long cane chair on the veranda of a dark bungalow sipping a gin and bitters - not that Maugham's writing needs any further atmospheric embellishment * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisWhole lives come into focus in this rich and diverse collection, as Desai trains her luminous spotlight on private universes from India to Canada and New England, from Cornwall to Mexico. Her protagonists set out on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or surprisingly back where they started from. Caught up in cycles of hope and disappointment, their lives are ruled by the seasons, or straitjacketed by the conventions of hospitality, friendship and family. In the title story, a beloved dog, black as Satan, brings nothing but disaster; in another, a business man away from home sees his own death; and elsewhere, old relationships stir up buried resentments, issues demand commitment - or escape. And in the final quiet masterpiece, one of Delhi''s girls of slender means finds a kind of joy and freedom in a strange rooftop community.Trade ReviewExquisite...these stories sparkle with the fire of real diamonds. * The Times *Contemporary Indian fiction writers are among the finest in the world, and Desai at her best, as she is throughout this collection, has deservedly won her place alongside them. * Irish Times *Unsentimental, dazzling, funny and achingly sad. * Literary Review *All her stories are full of a confidence in human nature that is a rarity and a pleasure to encounter. * The Spectator *Anita Desai is one of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture. * Alison Lurie *

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Book SynopsisJunichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past.All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.Trade ReviewA story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover * Time *At once sensational and serious... a middle-aged man's last bout of sexual passion * New York Times *That this is a work of rare art can never be in doubt * New Statesman *A story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover * The Times *Tanizaki tells the delicate and, in the end, frightening story with great skill...this is not a book you will soon forget * Boston Herald *

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Book SynopsisFannie Flagg takes us on a journey to a South that only Southerners know, to a time when ''Blue Velvet'' was played at the Senior Prom, and into the life of Daisy Fay Harper, a sassy, truth-telling heroine who just can''t stay out of trouble. What''s more she tells us everything - from what (or who) made her Daddy and Momma split up to what is really stashed in the freezer of the family''s malt shop.Daisy Fay is coming of age in the Gulf Coast''s Shell Beach, which is The End of the Road of the South, but a dandy place to meet the locals like hard-drinking Jimmy Snow, former debutante Mrs Dot and Daisy''s own Daddy. They''re all part of the fun that takes us down home, back to the ''50s, and into the best story ever written east of Texas...Trade ReviewDaisy Fay is just as sweet as her favorite movie-munchin' candy, Bit-O-Honey -- Lisa Cunningham * New York Times *Sheer unbeatable entertainment * Cosmopolitan *

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Book SynopsisThe thriller that opened a new chapter in the sex wars ...Thomas Sanders' world collapses in just 24 hours - he is passed over for promotion, his new woman boss comes on to him during a drink after work, then, the next morning, he learns that she has accused him of sexually harassing her.Trade ReviewThroat gripping * Daily Express *Wonderfully entertaining * Sunday Times *Compelling * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisPatrick White was born in England in 1912. His Australian parents took him home when he was six months old but educated him in England, at Cheltenham College and King's College, Cambridge. He settled in London, where his first novel, Happy Valley, was published to some acclaim in 1939. After serving in the RAF during the Second World War he returned to Australia with his partner, Manoly Lascaris. The novels, short stories and plays that followed The Tree of Man in 1956 made White a considerable figure in world literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. The Hanging Garden was begun and put aside in 1981 when White was lured away to write once again for the theatre. The unfinished novel was found among his papers after his death in September 1990 and published in 2012.Trade Review[This is] one of those magnificent novels given to us when a great writer is in perfect harmony with the mythic soul of humanity -- Carmen Callil * Guardian *He is, in the finest sense, a world novelist * Guardian *His greatest novel, The Tree of Man is a tragic pastoral about the penitential struggle with nature in a grim Australian Eden -- Peter Conrad * Observer *The novel has unforgettable scenes, marvellous characters, wide ranges of mood, strikingly fresh imagery - all those ingredients which make a novel...become a permanent part of our memory * Washington Post *A timeless work of art from which no essential element of life has been omitted * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT MACFARLANESet in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent, and as hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.Trade ReviewThe scenery is wonderfully described by the author… There is an interesting spiritual symmetry between the decline in fate of Voss and the circumstances in which Laura finds herself * Nudge *One of the greatest magicians of fiction ... White's scope is vast and his invention endless * Observer *Patrick White is, in the finest sense, a world novelist. His themes are catholic and complex and he pursues them with a single-minded energy and vision * Guardian *Australia's greatest novelist -- Geoffrey RushThe outstanding figure in Australian fiction * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisReaders of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon will love this gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns from multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell. ''The most brilliant mystery writer'' -- Patricia Cornwell''Probably the greatest crime writer in the world'' -- Ian Rankin''Totally gripping with superb twist at the end!'' -- ***** Reader review''Fascinating'' -- ***** Reader review''Superb on all counts'' -- ***** Reader review''Keeps the reader rooted to the spot and in the dark till the very end'' -- ***** Reader review************************************************************************************************Wherever Reggie Wexford goes, death and intrigue are close on his heels. Having just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime holiday in China, Wexford finds himself haunted by memories of the oldTrade ReviewThe most brilliant mystery writer of our time * Patricia Cornwell *Probably the greatest living crime writer in the world * Ian Rankin *Through the quality of her writing she's raised the game of the crime novel in this country * Peter James *

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Book SynopsisRead Pulitzer Prize-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Anne Tyler''s classic exploration of the impact of grief on a family.When young Janie Pike dies in a tragic accident, she leaves behind a family numbed with grief and torn with guilt and recrimination. In this compassionate and haunting novel Anne Tyler explores how each member of the family learns to face the future in their own way.**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**''Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing'' Rachel Joyce''She knows all the secrets of the human heart'' Monica Ali ''A masterly author'' Sebastian Faulks''I love Anne Tyler. I''ve read every single book she''s written'' Jacqueline WilsonTrade ReviewA wholly individual writer of considerable stature * Sunday Telegraph *Her touch is deft, her perceptions keen, her ear for speech phenomenal. Her people are triumphantly alive * New York Times *Miss Tyler is a writer whose special gift is to convey the richness, strangeness and unpredictability of seemingly everyday lives...She is a wholly individual writer and one of considerable stature * Sunday Telegraph *

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