Contemporary Fiction Books

Book SynopsisTony Parsons puts you right there in every scene he writes. I love that kind of storytelling and I'm a D.C. Max Wolfe fan. James Patterson A band of vigilante executioners roam London''s hot summer nights, abducting evil men and hanging them by the neck until dead. As the bodies pile up and riots explode across the sweltering city, DC Max Wolfe hunts a gang of killers who many believe to be heroes. And discovers that the lust for revenge starts very close to home ... Praise for The Hanging Club This is Parson's best crime novel so far and underlines his exceptional talent (Daily Mail) I''ve long been a fan of Tony Parson''s writingThis is brilliant stuff (Peter James) Spectacular! Tense and human, fast and authentic (Lee Child) Has all the ingredients and more: great plotting, great characters and at least two eye-widenTrade ReviewFrom the Sunday Times no.1 bestselling author, a brilliant page-turning new thriller that will keep you gripped and guessing until the very last page.“Tony Parsons puts you right there in every scene he writes. I love that kind of storytelling and I’m a D.C. Max Wolfe fan.” – James Patterson A band of vigilante executioners roam London's hot summer nights, abducting evil men and hanging them by the neck until dead. As the bodies pile up and riots explode across the sweltering city, DC Max Wolfe hunts a gang of killers who many believe to be heroes. And discovers that the lust for revenge starts very close to home ... Praise for The Hanging Club “This is Parson’s best crime novel so far and underlines his exceptional talent” (Daily Mail) "I've long been a fan of Tony Parson's writing…This is brilliant stuff" (Peter James) "Spectacular! Tense and human, fast and authentic" (Lee Child) ‘Has all the ingredients and more: great plotting, great characters and at least two eye-widening twists I didn't see coming.’ (Sophie Hannah) "If you haven’t already become a fan, the third outing for Max Wolfe is the perfect introduction to the London underworld that Tony Parsons has so vividly created…Wolfe’s cases couldn’t feel more of-the-minute" (GQ) “A gripping page-turning book that will demand your full attention” (Irish Examiner) “Fast paced and gripping” (Best Special Series) “Parsons had me gripped from the first chapter to the last sentence” (Irish independent) “A cleverly plotted page-turner, with touches of Cracker and Nordic Noir, all soaked in the atmosphere of London’s murky back-streets” (CSMA Club Life magazine) Praise for Tony Parsons… “It’s all as addictive as your favourite boxset…it contains more twists than a contortionist caught in a tornado” (The Shortlist) "Told with clarity and insight ... Confirms Parsons has earned a place at the very pinnacle of British crime writing" (Daily Mail) “Tense…with a dose of dry wit” (The Daily Express) “A taut always engaging thriller” (The Sun) “I put my life on hold while I was reading because I couldn't tear myself away from the gripping story... It's complicated, brutal but Tony Parsons has managed to weave the brutality into a truly brilliant story” (Bestselling Crime Thrillers) “It's a brilliant crime novel, a thrilling procedural. Max Wolfe is a wonderfully endearing character, smart and tough and vulnerable, and with Scout (and Stan too) Tony has created so much warmth and tenderness, in a world, a genre, so often devoid of it. His research is wide, deep, impeccable - from forensics to the psychology, procedure to protocol. And boy does he know how to create suspense, and convincing plot lines, which snake and weave, and surprise right until the very end. This is a complex, shocking, very contemporary story, told with utter conviction and authority. I was hooked from page one. Crime writing has a brilliant new star” (Henry Sutton) “Sometimes, rarely, you know from the first chapter or so of a novel that you're in the hands of a master story teller. In the case of Tony Parsons…we know this within the first few pages. A relentless plot, evocative prose and compelling (and wrenching) portraits of the characters, good and evil, conspire to make this a must-read" (Jeffery Deaver) “Superbly crafted crime drama that grips from start to finish” (The Sunday Post) “Fast paced and gripping” (The Scotsman) ‘[Tony Parsons'] writing pedigree is first class. It shows in this terrific thriller, and Max Wolfe is a class act, a brilliant character that has to feature again ... Absolutely stunning!’ (Books Monthly) * Publisher's description *I've long been a fan of Tony Parson's writing and I'm really enjoying his genre move into crime fiction. This is brilliant stuff. * Peter James *Spectacular! Tense and human, fast and authentic. * Lee Child *Told with clarity and insight ... Confirms Parsons has earned a place at the very pinnacle of British crime writing. * Daily Mail *A relentless plot, evocative prose and compelling portraits of the characters, good and evil, conspire to make this a must read. * Jeffery Deaver *

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Book SynopsisLet multi-million copy seller Alexander Kent transport you right to the heart of the action in this high-octane, pacy and gripping naval adventure. Fans of Patrick O''Brian and C. S. Forester will not be disappointed.''One of our foremost writers of naval fiction'' - Sunday Times''As a former naval officer, Alexander Kent knows what it is like to be at sea'' -- The Times''Engrossing'' -- ***** Reader review''Great action, great characters, great adventure'' -- ***** Reader review''Unexpected twists and turns, fascinating plot lines and gripping descriptions of naval battles'' -- ***** Reader review''A difficult book to put down!'' -- ***** Reader review*****************************************************************************************1792: A troubled peace with France means that the English royal fleet has been left to rot.Even a frigate captain aTrade ReviewPraise for Alexander Kent: 'One of our foremost writers of naval fiction' Sunday Times'Shipwreck, survival ... a spirited battle ... a splendid yarn' The Times

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Book SynopsisAlexander Kent is the author of twenty-seven acclaimed books featuring Richard Bolitho. Under his own name, Douglas Reeman, and in the course of a career spanning forty-five years, he has written over thirty novels and two non-fiction books.Trade ReviewShipwreck, survival... a spirited battle... a splendid yarn * Times *One of our foremost writers of naval fiction * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThis naval page-turner from the pen of the master storyteller of the sea, multi-million copy seller Alexander Kent, is full of action, political intrigue and personal tragedy and is perfect for fans of Patrick O''Brian and C. S. Forester. Dive in and get straight to the heart of the action!''One of our foremost writers of naval fiction'' -- Sunday Times''Shipwreck, survival ... a spirited battle ... a splendid yarn'''' -- The Times''Really good book, needed to keep turning the pages'' -- ***** Reader review''This series is the daddy!'' -- ***** Reader review''A jolly good read'' -- ***** Reader review''Great novel, great writing, always guaranteed to keep me interested'' -- ***** Reader review''Excellent read, you''re there with Boltho!'' -- ***** Reader review''Exciting throughout. Brilliant!'' -- ***** Reader review*****Trade ReviewOne of our foremost writers of naval fiction * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015 AND THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2015Meet the Bradleys.In lots of ways, they’re a normal family:Zippy is sixteen and in love for the first time;Trade ReviewI cannot remember a time when a novel has seduced me so completely . . . Bray writes with such clarity, intelligence and authenticity that it feels as if a trusted old friend is telling you the story, that the characters are people you know. * The Times *Wonderful ... heartbreaking, compassionate and funny. -- Shelley Harris * Independent on Sunday *Bray explores the healing power of religion with rare assurance in one of the year's most impressive debuts. * Mail on Sunday *Bray brings humour, empathy and knowledge to what is fundamentally a novel about grief and faith ... Read this if you like: Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You. * Harper's Bazaar *I loved this tender, moving, funny and deeply truthful story about a family and a faith tested to breaking-point. -- Helen Dunmore, author of THE LIE

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Book SynopsisKennedy Marr is a novelist from the old school. Irish, acerbic, and a borderline alcoholic and sex-addict, his mantra is drink hard, write hard and try to screw every woman you meet. He's writing film scripts in LA, fucking, drinking and insulting his way through Californian society, but also suffering from writers block and unpaid taxes. Then a solution presents itself Marr is to be the unlikely recipient of the W. F. Bingham Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Modern Literature, an award worth half a million pounds. But it does not come without a price: he must spend a year teaching at the English university where his ex-wife and estranged daughter now reside. As Kennedy acclimatises to the sleepy campus, inspiring revulsion and worship in equal measure, he's forced to reconsider his precarious lifestyle. Incredible as it may seem, there might actually be a father and a teacher lurking inside this preening, narcissistic, priapic, sociopath'. Or is thereTrade ReviewStraight White Male is a heartbreaker; a poignant literary treatise on the all-too-mortal battle between human individual desire and social need, disguised as a high-octane novel of laddish excess. -- Irvine WelshThere's nothing faster, sadder or funnier than John Niven on men. I cried three times and laughed fifty. Magnificent. -- Caitlin MoranJohn Niven has much, much more fun with Kennedy’s drinking, fornicating, fighting, time-wasting antics than with his putative rehabilitation, and the reader does, too. We can’t help rooting for Kennedy, a seducer but never a misogynist; a charmer who rushes at life with zest and brio … Straight White Male is a sharp and knowing satire of the film industry, publishing and academia ... Thoroughly enjoyable. -- Suzi Feay * Guardian *It takes confidence to write a book critiquing books and writers, with a central character who’s abundantly free with his views, but Niven shouldn’t be underestimated…The tone here is authentic … Funny and angry, for sure, yet also thought and humane … Straight White Male is strong indeed. * The Times *Straight White Male is in some ways a return to the coruscating satirical landscape of Niven’s debut, yet blended with a maturity and emotional depth that will have the reader shedding a tear as well as laughing in guilty outrage …[Niven] creates a truly moving examination of male midlife crisis, and what it means to be a son, a father, a husband and all the rest. Hilarious and heartfelt in equal measure, this is another candidate for novel of the year. * The Big Issue *

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Book SynopsisAs ice water melts into the Atlantic, and vast swathes of people make for the warmer south, Dylan is heading to Scotland, once the home of his late mother and grandmother. Though the weather worsens, his presence brings a new light to daily life, and when the ultimate disaster finally strikes, they'll all be ready.Trade Review[A] vivid and tender coming-of-age story set at the end of the world . . . For all its coldness and darkness, The Sunlight Pilgrims is ultimately a hopeful book – and for a novel that describes the end of the world, that is quite a feat. -- Kirsty Logan * Guardian *Fagan received widespread acclaim for her 2012 debut The Panopticon, and was named as one of the prestigious Granta Best of Young British Novelists a year later. The Sunlight Pilgrims further cements Fagan’s reputation as a writer of skill and depth, a book that shares a similar outsider charm to its predecessor, and one that delves deep into how we relate to others on a human level in the face of all the crap that life throws at us … The author also, it should be said, writes like the poet that she is, with an original eye for description, a wonderful rhythm to her prose, and some genuinely inspiring and unusual characters. An impressive read. -- Doug Johnstone * Big Issue *The Sunlight Pilgrims evokes a chillingly plausible near-future . . . intimately imagined. -- Paraic O'Donnell * The Spectator *Fagan’s vivid, poetic-prose style injects the book with energy. She writes at the pace of thought, sentences like gunfire … She has a poet's affection for precision and image. -- Sophie Elmhirst * Financial Times *Fagan is drawn to those who exist on the outer reaches, and in The Sunlight Pilgrims it is in the literal margins where a broader and yet more refined collection of voices is drawn together … The Sunlight Pilgrims is about the confluence of characters searching to fill the gaps in their lives … In the transgender 11-year-old Stella we have an engaging protagonist whose isolation is mental, physical and geographical, yet who is imbued with a survivalist’s steely resolve ... Indeed, it is somewhere between Alan Warner and Iain Banks that Fagan’s storytelling ability sits, the grit of her familial backstories and dysfunctional relationships dusted with the glitter of magical realism ... In heightened poetic prose, Fagan does for rural Scottish fiction what Kathleen Jamie is doing in poetry and Amy Liptrot in non-fiction: evocatively documenting the ever-changing daily drama of the landscape … This is a novel about summoning hidden strengths and finding one’s place in a universe defined by chaos. -- Ben Myers * New Statesman *

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Book SynopsisA meticulous and gripping reimagination of the Brighton bomb' Observer, Best Novels of 2015In September 1984, a man calling himself Roy Walsh checked into The Grand Hotel in Brighton and planted a bomb in room 629. The device was primed to explode in twenty-four days, six hours and six minutes, when intelligence had confirmed that Margaret Thatcher and her whole cabinet would be staying in the hotel.Moving between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, and told from the perspectives of a young IRA explosives expert, the deputy hotel manager and his teenage daughter, High Dive is a taut and tender retelling of one of the most ambitious assassination attempts against the British establishment.Trade ReviewLee’s powerful novel is an extraordinary performance: vividly written, painfully human and fully fleshing the inner lives of its characters. * Sunday Times *High Dive did for the Brighton bombings what Garth Risk Hallberg's overhyped City on Fire attempted to do for the New York City blackout - it's a multivoiced epic that builds towards a stunning finale. I loved it. -- Alex Preston * Observer - Best Novels of 2015 *Achingly good … Satisfyingly tricky when it comes to speeding up and slowing down, keeping readers off balance, teasing them about when what’s already irrevocable is actually going to happen … At his best – and he is at it often – Lee displays a nimble metaphysical wit and a verbal ingenuity on a par with Martin Amis … In High Dive, the ticktock means more than the boom… The novel’s last, almost whispered word about the bombing’s carnage is left to stand among the most devastating observations ever made about terrorism: “Someone had considered this fair”. It is Jonathan Lee’s great achievement to have written, on this of all subjects, one of the gentlest novels in memory. * The New Yorker *Jonathan Lee [is] a wordsmith of incomparable eloquence…High Dive is a work of serious and thoughtful integrity. * Independent *An ingenious and original mixture of the domestic and the political, set in the days leading up to the Brighton bombing of 1984. At its heart is a father-and-daughter relationship that feels uncannily real and wonderfully touching. -- David Nicholls * Observer, Summer Reads *Achingly good … on a par with Martin Amis … In High Dive, the ticktock means more than the boom… The novel’s last, almost whispered word about the bombing’s carnage is left to stand among the most devastating observations ever made about terrorism: “Someone had considered this fair”. It is Jonathan Lee’s great achievement to have written, on this of all subjects, one of the gentlest novels in memory. * The New Yorker *Hauntingly atmospheric ... Lee is quite brilliant at excavating the disappointment of characters constantly chasing lost opportunities. * Guardian *Devastating ... Inspired ... We make so many complex emotional investments in the lives of Lee's characters that it takes a monk's restraint not to flip to the very end of the book before you get there. * New York Times *High Dive is a novel so smart and compassionate and beautifully written that it asks for total immersion. A reader will hold her breath for long, perfectly-paced stretches, and she will surface, dizzied, at the end. -- Lauren Groff, author of Fates and FuriesThe novel is full of gentle humour: its tones are mostly warm and compassionate…High Dive is a moving and charismatic novel…It succeeds, through its multiple sympathies and scrupulous empathy, on its own terms * Financial Times *Engrossing … Effortlessly switching between Belfast and Brighton in stylist prose that perfectly captures the tension and tenor of the times, it’s highly recommended. * Mail on Sunday *Novels about terrorism aren’t usually this tender. It’s Lee’s way of bringing home the cost of bloodshed ... A tragi-comic tale full of warmth and muddled humanity. * Metro *High Dive is a fascinating look into a troubled past. In taut scene after taut scene, with a fine style and wit among the carnage, Jonathan Lee does service to history and the novel both. -- Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the EndLee masterfully ekes poetry out of everyday life…As a character study High Dive is faultless. Freya, Moose and Dan exist, you know them, they are gloriously and fully realized. * Stylist *Lee has crafted an absorbing character piece that feels startlingly real. Even though the dread of the looming disaster is always there, the main characters’ stories are given plenty of room to breathe and their mundane struggles with everyday life are extremely relatable. High Dive is funny, troublesome and poignant, and will cement Lee’s reputation. * Herald *

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Book SynopsisSusan Frobisher and Julie Wickham are turning sixty. Susan has just discovered that her recently deceased husband was not only a swinger but had run up a fortune in debts in pursuing his extravagant double life. Julie''s not faring better: living in a council house and working in an old people''s home, she''s desperate for excitement.When the bank threatens to take Susan''s beloved home to clear the debt, the women seek the help of an octogenarian gangster named Nails. Rather than let the bank take everything Susan has, they''re going to take the bank. With the help of Nails and a thrill-crazy, wheelchair-bound friend they pull off the daring robbery, and discover that getting away with it is not so easy and that the adventure is only just beginning.Trade ReviewA hearty bloodstained handshake, then, for John Niven’s The Sunshine Cruise Company, in which a group of women aged from their mid-teens to advanced eighties get to behave in a thoroughly disreputable fashion…This new novel, Niven’s seventh, breaks with his usual habit of laying bare the male psyche, but retains his celebrated strengths: sparky, unfussy writing; a fast-moving plot; and, most notably, an ability to be thoroughly outspoken about matters sexual and scatological whilst retaining a surprising degree of empathy for the human trials of his characters…Comic fiction that reduces all its personnel to mere caricatures can be a trial to read, but this book, for all the amped-up extremity of the events it portrays, works because its characters get a grounding in emotional reality as well as a bunch of outrageous events with which to contend…Engaging, utterly accessible and boundary-bending: middle-aged chick lit that follows none of the conventions of middle-aged chick lit; lad lit that features no lads. In other words, it’s for pretty much anyone, provided they can stomach Ethel’s vocabulary and the unsavoury details of Barry’s exit from life…It would be a major thrill to see a story like this in movie form. Might the ladies of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel be persuaded to consider a slightly racier residence…? * Independent *The fun is considerable…a caper…it may well be the funniest thing you’ll read this year. * Independent on Sunday *John Niven manages the trick of being both profane and humane. -- Ian Rankin * Observer - summer reads *Fast-moving, acerbic, occasionally tasteless but never dull, this will delight anyone who thinks old people get a raw deal…A great comic romp with deft touches. * Mail on Sunday *The wild man of literature… [The Sunshine Cruise Company is] Fast and furious and, characteristically, brutal in places. * Independent *

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Book SynopsisSalman Rushdie is the author of sixteen novels, including Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), The Satanic Verses, and Quichotte (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.Trade Review"'A wonderful book' Independent on Sunday" "Salman Rushdie's greatest novel...held me in its thrall and provided the richest fictional experience of 1995" Sunday Times "Rushdie is still our most exhilaratingly inventive prose stylist, a writer of breathtaking originality" Financial Times "Endlessly inventive, witty, digressional and diverting" Observer

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Book SynopsisEvery story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but behind closed doors things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.Trade ReviewEnough betrayal, vengeance and sex to read like one of the Greek tragedies * Observer *Rich, lyrical and rewarding. * Guardian (Books of the Year) *A lyrical and, at times, astonishingly beautiful account of how little it is possible to know about those closest to us. * Financial Times *Addictive to read ... Groff has drawn a woman so complex it seems that with every chapter a new layer is revealed, each as deliciously intriguing as the next … The result is a compelling portrait of an unconventional marriage across two decades. * Stylist *[A] stunning achievement. The plotting is elegant, intricate and assured . . . it will give you much to savour. * Independent *Absorbing and beautifully written, this is a riveting study of love, power and creativity. * Sunday Express *A truly special novel ... if you haven't read her before, I'm delighted to take the credit for introducing you to one of your new favourite authors. * The Pool *A searing exploration of how far a person will go for love, loyalty and revenge. * Time *Rare and impressive… Groff has created a novel of extraordinary and genuine complexity…The word “ambitious” is often used as code for “overly ambitious”, a signal that an author’s execution has fallen short. No such hidden message here. Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout. * New York Times *A book to submit to and be knocked out by. * Meg Wolitzer *A dazzling novel ... At once intimate and sweeping, this is the story of a marriage as parallel myths-- flaring with passion and betrayal, with redemption and retribution, with the sort of heart-breaking, head-slapping secrets that make you want to seek out someone else who's read it. Lauren Groff is a powerful and graceful writer, one of the best of her generation. * Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins *Barack Obama’s favourite book of last year (and getting on for ours too), Fates and Furies is finally coming out in paperback. The tale of a marriage in parallel myths is a truly delicious story. * Observer Magazine – We Love… *[An] ingenious novel ... buttressed by real emotional power * Mail on Sunday *Devastatingly good, with the most satisfying ending I've read in a long time. The writing is gorgeous, the plot twisting, and the characters are almost too real. * Sara Taylor, Guardian Books of the Year *A clear-the-ground triumph ... Groff captures the complicated ways love blesses, transforms and, yes, deceives us over many years…There’s a touch of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this glamorous story… Halfway through, Groff leverages her story in a remarkable and transformative way … A vertiginous ride that will shake your confidence in what you think you know about your spouse — and yourself. * Washington Post *

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Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SALMAN RUSHDIEAs well as her eight novels, Angela Carter published four wonderful collections of short stories during her lifetime, and contributed stories to several anthologies. The stories were scattered amongst different publishers, and a couple of the volumes are now out of print. In Burning your Boats they are gathered for the first time; this is a key collection and a major event for Angela Carter aficionados.Trade ReviewA fine, fierce, incandescent talent * Scotland on Sunday *Burning Your Boats brings together her four volumes of short fiction...They testify to Carter's range, daring and her invention. An important book * Irish Times *A writer cultured in every sense of the word, whose syntax is ever artful, whose vocabulary is zestfully arcane, whose erudition manifests itself in her work in a shimmering play of parody and illusion. She was one of the century's best writers, and her stories are among her finest works * Sunday Times *This is the voice the young generation are flocking to read and study, and these marvellous collected stories wonderfully explain why no pigeon-hole could ever contain her creator. When you read all the stories collected together, a sense of joy erupts that such writing can exist * Daily Telegraph *World-class stories, woven from their author's high humour, glittering imagination, vital erudition and warm intelligence * Independent *

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Book SynopsisIsmail Kadare (19362024) is Albania's best-known novelist and poet. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. He was awarded the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005, the Jerusalem Prize in 2015, the Park Kyong-ni Prize in 2019 and the Neustadt Prize in 2020.Trade ReviewPowerful, empathetic, at times harrowing... executed with an elegant combination of horror, absurdity, indignation, and other-worldliness... A chilling, humane and strangely beautiful work * Independent *[Kadare] captures the paranoid nature of life under constant surveillance...and produces an ironic masterpiece * Daily Mail *Filled with striking images and conceits… a powerful Kafkaesque charge… Kadare’s imaginative intelligence ensures that it is chilling and intriguing -- Theo Tait * Sunday Times *A compelling amalgam of realism, dreaminess and elegiac, white-hot fury. Kadare communicates with awful immediacy the nature of tyranny and the accommodations that those subject to it must make - as Kadare himself had to do -- John Banville * Financial Times *The literature Kadare has produced in the face of obstacles lesser writers would find insuperable, is, genuinely, of world significance... Invites comparison with Milan Kundera's recent satire on Stalinism, The Festival of Insignificance. Both writers are favourites, year-in, year-out for the Nobel prize. Kadare will not damage his prospects with A Girl in Exile -- John Sutherland * The Times *

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Book SynopsisThe hilarious and heartwarming new novel from the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop CafeWisconsin, 1941 With all the men off to war, Fritzi and her sisters must learn men's work and the All-Girl Filling Station is born, complete with neat little caps, short skirts, and roller-skates. Their peace doesn't last long though: skilled women are needed to fly planes for the war effortAlabama, 2005 Mrs Sookie Earle has just married off the last of her daughters and is looking forward to putting her feet up. But then one day a package arrives. Its contents knock Sookie sideways, propelling her back to the 1940s, and four irrepressible sisters whose wartime adventures force them to reimagine who they are, and what they are capable of.Flagg is a writer of great warmth and wisdom... A richly imagined family saga' The TimesWonderful... A warm, funny riff on family and identity'' Daily MailTrade ReviewFlagg is a writer of great warmth and wisdom... A richly imagined family saga -- Kate Saunders * The Times *More heart than a shopful of Valentine cards and some absolutely wonderful characters... A warm, funny riff on family and identity -- Wendy Holden * Daily Mail *Wonderfully entertaining * Sainsbury's Magazine *Good fun... Southern manners, indomitable broads, smelling salts and rip-roaring adventure * Optima Magazine *A wonderfully warm and moving read * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisMargery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She sold her first story at age 8 and published her first novel before turning 20. She married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter in 1927. In 1928 Allingham published her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, and the following year, in The Crime at Black Dudley, she introduced the detective who was to become the hallmark of her sophisticated crime novels and murder mysteries - Albert Campion. Famous for her London thrillers, such as Hide My Eyes and The Tiger in the Smoke, Margery Allingham has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city's shady underworld. Acclaimed by crime novelists such as P.D. James, Allingham is counted alongside Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and Gladys Mitchell as a pre-eminent Golden Age crime writer. Margery Allingham died in 1966.Trade ReviewThe best of mystery writers * New Yorkers *Don't start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction * Independent *One of the finest golden age crime novelists * Sunday Telegraph *Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light -- Agatha Christie

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Book SynopsisA VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERYJohn Lafcadio's ambition to be known as the greatest painter since Rembrandt was not to be thwarted by a matter as trifling as his own death. A set of twelve sealed paintings is the bequest he leaves to his widow together with the instruction that she unveil one canvas each year before a carefully selected audience. Albert Campion is among the cast of gadabouts, muses and socialites gathered for the latest ceremony but art is the last thing on the sleuth's mind when a brutal stabbing occurs.Trade ReviewMargery Allingham stands out like a shining light -- Agatha ChristieMargery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered -- P.D. JamesDon't start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction * Independent *Miss Allingham is one of the few writers who can deal with art. Both her passions and her patterns are beautiful, accurate and serene * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisMargery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She sold her first story at age 8 and published her first novel before turning 20. She married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter in 1927. In 1928 Allingham published her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, and the following year, in The Crime at Black Dudley, she introduced the detective who was to become the hallmark of her sophisticated crime novels and murder mysteries - Albert Campion. Famous for her London thrillers, such as Hide My Eyes and The Tiger in the Smoke, Margery Allingham has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city's shady underworld. Acclaimed by crime novelists such as P.D. James, Allingham is counted alongside Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and Gladys Mitchell as a pre-eminent Golden Age crime writer. Margery Allingham died in 1966.Trade ReviewThe real queen of crime * Guardian *Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light -- Agatha ChristieFaultless * The Times *Allingham is the best of mystery writers * New Yorker *

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Book SynopsisA VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERYAgatha Christie called her a shining light'. Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the ''true queen'' of the classic murder mystery?A baker's dozen of cases, each putting Albert Campion through his paces. In this miscellany of villainy, our unconventional sleuth must contend with misbehaving debutantes, sinister smuggling rings, a Dowager Countess who's not all that she seems, an SOS message daubed in lipstick, a beleaguered New York socialite, and an elderly Egyptologist indulging in some bad behaviourTrade ReviewMargery Allingham has worked her way up to a worthy place among the tiny hierarchy of front-rankers in the detective world * Tatler *Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light -- Agatha ChristieAllingham is the best of mystery writers * New Yorker *The real queen of crime * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisA Richard & Judy Book Club PickNew York Times Bestseller Sara has never left Sweden but at the age of 28 she decides it's time. She cashes in her savings, packs a suitcase full of books and sets off for Broken Wheel, Iowa, a town where she knows nobody.Sara quickly realises that Broken Wheel is in desperate need of some adventure, a dose of self-help and perhaps a little romance, too. In short, this is a town in need of a bookshop.With a little help from the locals, Sara sets up Broken Wheel's first bookstore. The shop might be a little quirky but then again, so is Sara. And as Broken Wheel's story begins to take shape, there are some surprises in store for Sara too ''The perfect summer read'' StylistTrade ReviewA charmingly offbeat, genuinely amusing novel... the perfect summer read * Stylist *Katarina Bivald has written an absolutely delightful, charming book that celebrates the healing power of friendship and love often found in small towns. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, and I could not recommend it more highly * Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe *This adorable book is a peach. It’s built on the same lines as Cold Comfort Farm or Chocolat... Wise, thoughtful, funny, warm, moving; all that stuff and more -- Wendy Holden * Daily Mail *This is a story about community, about being needed and about belonging... A warm, cosy, compassionate read * Independent *A manifesto for booksellers, booklovers, and friendship. We should all celebrate these little bookstores, where our souls find home... one of these books you want to live in for a while * Nina George, author of The Little Paris Bookshop *I was captivated by this tale of books, friendship and the search for happy endings * Woman & Home *A heartwarming tale about literature's power to transform * People *A celebration of people who read to help them survive and thrive * Sainsbury's Magazine *A heartwarming and utterly charming debut... This gentle, intelligent Midwestern tale will captivate... An ideal book group selection, it reminds us why we are book lovers and why it's nice to read a few happy endings * Library Journal, starred review *Bivald encourages us to look for adventure in both literature and life... Charming * Lady *An international bestseller, this quirky, offbeat novel about books, with its wry humour and wonderful characters, is a delicious read * Choice Magazine *Charmingly original....sweet, quirky * Washington Post *This is a charming novel for book lovers from all walks of life… As you journey through the pages, weaving Little Women, Harry Potter, Jodi Picoult, Jane Austen, Steig Larsson and Proust around the storyline, you’ll find yourself rooting for the beautifully drawn characters, smiling at the wry humour and applauding the ending * Candis Magazine *Charming and relatable -- Mel Mitchell * Nudge *You’ll love it -- Catherine Small * Irish News *

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Book SynopsisTHE NOVEL THAT INSPIRED THE OSCAR WINNING FILMAmidst the horrors of Auschwitz, German officer, Angelus Thomsen, has found love. But unfortunately for Thomsen, the object of his affection is already married to his camp commandant, Paul Doll.As Thomsen and Doll's wife pursue their passion the gears of Nazi Germany's Final Solution grinding around them Doll is riven by suspicion. With his dignity in disrepute and his reputation on the line, Doll must take matters into his own hands and bring order back to the chaos that reigns around him.It is exceptionally brave. Shakespearean. It's exciting; it's alive; it's more than slightly mad. As the title suggests, it is dreadfully interesting.' Sunday TimesTrade ReviewAuschwitz was, in the most essential sense, “unspeakable”. It’s thus something only creative writing can speak about. If you’re Amis, that is…. The most daring novelist of our time. -- John Sutherland * The Times *The Zone of Interest is a tour de force of sheer verbal virtuosity, and a brilliant, celestially upsetting novel inspired by no less than a profound moral curiosity about human beings. It's stunning. -- Richard FordNasty, timely, as good as anything Amis has written since London Fields… He has done his subject justice. * Spectator *It is energetic, deeply researched, it is bracingly cruel… It makes the reader squirm and resist and finally laugh… A superb novel, an important one… Where was the career-crowning work that might finally win this author his Booker? Seriously, look no further. -- Tom Lamont * GQ *He likes to stamp every sentence with his authority, like the name through a stick of rock, and here he reinvents hell on earth in his distinctively gaudy, insistent, elaborate prose. It is exceptionally brave…. Shakespearean…. It’s exciting; it’s alive; it’s more than slightly mad. As the title suggests, it is dreadfully interesting. -- Theo Tait * Sunday Times *

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Book Synopsis**WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD**I love Idaho' Paula Hawkins, bestselling author of The Girl on the TrainThis sharp, stunning debut novel and Irish bestseller about grief, loss and redemption is your next literary obsession One hot August day a family drives to a mountain clearing to collect birch wood. Jenny, the mother, is in charge of lopping any small limbs off the logs with a hatchet. Wade, the father, does the stacking. The two daughters, June and May, aged nine and six, drink lemonade, swat away horseflies, bicker, sing snatches of songs as they while away the time. But then Jenny does something unspeakable, an act so extreme it will scatter the family in every different direction, and leave dark unanswered questions for years to come.Unflinchingmulti-layered storytelling that is both beautiful and devastating' Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Trade ReviewI love Idaho for the sparse beauty of its prose, the unsolvable mystery at its heart, the cleverly constructed non-linear narrative and its preoccupations… which so closely match my own -- Paula Hawkins * Guardian *Writing that has the cool sharpness of lemonade... Unflinching, unfrilly, multi-layered storytelling that is both beautiful and devastating -- Rachel JoyceHauntingly brilliant, this book will stay with you for days after you’ve put it down * Evening Standard, Books of the Year *You're in masterly hands here... will remind many of the great Idaho novel, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping... wrenching and beautiful * New York Times Book Review *From the first page it is clear that Ruskovich’s poetic, spare writing would be enough to compel on its own, but this extraordinary story of a violent event that decimates a young family in northern Idaho is the true engine here. It’s a puzzle that enthrals from the outset. -- Lucy Clark * Guardian *

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Book Synopsis1899, China. The Mandarins are becoming troublesome again and there are rumors that attacks will soon begin on British trade missions and legations. Captain David Blackwoodof the Royal Marines, received a VC in the bloody battle for Benin, Africa but is now being packed off to this apparent backwater.Trade Review'One of our foremost writers of naval fiction' Sunday TimesMasterly storytelling. * The Times *

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Book SynopsisLet the master storyteller of the sea, multi-million copy seller Alexander Kent, transport you to the heart of the action in this no-holds-barred naval adventure. You''ll feel like you''re on the deck with Bolitho! ''One of our foremost writers of naval fiction'' -- Sunday Times''Shipwreck, survival ... a spirited battle ... a splendid yarn'''' -- The Times''A great read from beginning to the end'' -- ***** Reader review''Keeps you hooked - I was not able to stop reading until the dramatic finale!!!'' -- ***** Reader review''Edge of your seat reading, most enjoyable'' -- ***** Reader review''Difficult to put down. Superb'' -- ***** Reader review''Another masterpiece from Alexander Kent'' -- ***** Reader review**************************************************************************************************1808: As NaTrade Review'One of our foremost writers of naval fiction' - Sunday Times 'Shipwreck, survival - a spirited battle - a splendid yarn' - The Times

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Book SynopsisFans of Patrick O''Brian and C. S. Forester will love this gripping, all-guns-blazing naval adventure from multi-million copy seller Alexander Kent - full of passion and compassion, you''ll won''t be able to put this one down...!''One of our foremost writers of naval fiction'' -- Sunday Times''Shipwreck, survival ... a spirited battle ... a splendid yarn'''' -- The Times''Another cracking yarn'' -- ***** Reader review''Leaves you breathless'' -- ***** Reader review''Yet another awesome tale from the master storyteller''-- ***** Reader review''Draws you in and keeps you engaged the whole way''-- ***** Reader review''Excellent book, you feel you are there in the middle of the fighting'' -- ***** Reader review*********************************************************************************1802: Richard Bolitho is summoned to tTrade ReviewOne of our foremost writers of naval fiction * Sunday Times *Shipwreck, survival ... a spirited battle ... a splendid yarn' * The Times *

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Book SynopsisThe truth will set you free if it doesn''t kill you first. New York attorney Trevor Mann's world shatters when he receives a phone call telling him his girlfriend has been shot dead in a mugging. But the circumstances point to something more calculated than a random attack. Claire was a New York Times journalist and Trevor is convinced she had unearthed a secret so shocking that she was murdered to keep it from coming to light. Chasing Claire's leads, Trevor will risk everything to discover what exactly she was killed for.It's time to find out the truth, or die.

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Book SynopsisMinette Walters is England's bestselling female crime writer. She is the author of eleven novels and has won the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel, the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best crime novel published in America and two CWA Gold Daggers for Fiction. Minette Walters lives in Dorset with her husband and two children.Trade ReviewThis compact and extraordinarily atmospheric story packs much more than many longer books. * The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisHugh Howey spent eight years living on boats and working as a yacht captain for the rich and famous. It wasn't until the love of his life carried him away from these vagabond ways that he began to pursue literary adventures, rather than literal ones. Hugh wrote and self-published the Wool trilogy, which won rave reviews and praise from readers, and whose three books have gone on to become international bestsellers.Trade ReviewSand immerses you in its grubby post-apocalyptic world … Howey conjures a credible, brutal future. * Financial Times *Hugh Howey can really write. * SFX *In short, Sand will earn Mr Howey another well-deserved million or more. * Daily Sport *This terrifically fresh and well-realised setting provides the background for a richly emotional story about families and communities. * Morning Star *Sand shows the success of Howey’s Wool Trilogy was no fluke. This is a superior SF thriller, both slick and gritty. * Financial Times *

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Book SynopsisFROM PULITZER PRIZEWINNER JOSHUA COHEN''Dazzling and engrossing'' Colm Tóibín, Guardian''Untainted and unique'' Rachel Kushner''Intensely perceptive'' Independent Book of Numbers is a novel about two men of the same age and with the same name: Joshua Cohen. The first Joshua is a writer whose keenly anticipated debut had the bad luck to be published on September 11, 2001. The other Joshua is the enigmatic billionaire Founder and CEO of the world''s most profitable tech company.Autobiography, family memoir, phoned-in ghostwriting, international thriller, sex comedy - Book of Numbers brings to life the full range of modern experience in the course of its epic journey.''More impressive than all but a few novels published so far this decade'' New York TimesTrade ReviewJoshua Cohen’s novel Book of Numbers reads as if Philip Roth’s work were fired into David Foster Wallace’s inside the Hadron particle collider…Book of Numbers is more impressive than all but a few novels published so far this decade. Mr. Cohen, all of 34, emerges as a major American writer -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times *Joshua Cohen’s novel Book of Numbers reads as if Philip Roth’s work were fired into David Foster Wallace’s inside the Hadron particle collider…Book of Numbers is more impressive than all but a few novels published so far this decade. Mr. Cohen, all of 34, emerges as a major American writer -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times *A hugely ambitious novel set in the high-tech world of now. It is a verbal high-wire act, daring in its tones and textures: clever, poetic, fast-moving, deeply playful, filled with jokes, savvy about machines, wise about people, dazzling and engrossing -- Colm Toibin * Guardian *Intelligent, lyrical, prosaic, theoretical, pragmatic, funny, serious. [Cohen's] best prose does everything at once -- James WoodBook of Numbers is a lot of things – a disquisition on and aping of the Internet, a dissection of friendship and romance in the Digital Age, and a doppelgänger tale – but for me it’s most poignant as an elegy for the written word, and as a rebuke to its decline -- Joshua Ferris

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Book SynopsisNOW AN APPLE TV SERIES''Extraordinary...dazzling... a sprawling, generous, warm-hearted epic of 1970s New York'' Observer Midnight, New Year''s Eve, 1976. Nine lives are about to be changed forever.Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, heirs to one of New York''s greatest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by the punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbour - and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year''s Eve.Then, on July 13th, 1977, the lights go out.''Dazzling'' Washington Post''Heart-stopping'' New York Times''Addictive'' Independent''Extraordinary'' ObserverTrade ReviewExtraordinary…dazzling… a sprawling, generous, warm-hearted epic of 1970s New York * Observer *Staggering…gloriously ambitious * Independent on Sunday *A novel of head-snapping ambition and heart-stopping power – a novel that attests to its young author’s boundless and unflagging talents * New York Times *Exciting, imaginative and perfectly paced * Daily Telegraph *Dickensian, massively entertaining, as close to a great American novel as this century has produced -- Stephen KingYou’re soon zipping through Hallberg’s vividly realised New York like a child discovering Hogwarts for the first time * The Times *This book felt to me like a DVD boxset, in that each chapter was so short that I’d find myself reading just one more, just one more, and then find myself still reading an hour later. I love this book: this is definitely for me the best book we’ve done on the Book Club this year. * Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club *Once I started Hallberg's addictive soap opera shuttling between uptown and downtown Manhattan, I couldn't stop ... This is The Goldfinch with a safety pin through its beak. -- James Kidd * Independent *A tour de force * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisSamantha Harvey is the author of the novels Orbital, The Wilderness, All is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind and a work of non-fiction, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Orbital was the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, and her other work has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, the Women's Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness was awarded the Betty Trask Prize. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.Trade ReviewA glorious, sensuous, grown-up novel, intelligent and passionate. -- Tessa HadleyHarvey has struck gold… Perhaps because it is so intimate, so honest, so raw, Dear Thief provokes you to think about life, and Life, and your own life. -- Claire Kilroy * Guardian *Beautiful... Exhilarating... Remarkable -- James Wood * New Yorker *Compassionate, matter-of-fact and mysterious about death and its ultimate transforming… Harvey offers an incandescent vision of hope and acceptance. -- Catherine Taylor * Sunday Telegraph *A quiet, unusual book, full of sad truths. I loved this epistolary novel of friendship, betrayal and forgiveness. -- Paula Hawkins, author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN * Guardian *Harvey’s writing is stunning: an effortless spool that winds back the layers… Brilliant. -- Kate Saunders * The Times *Singular and haunting. -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail *

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Book Synopsis*JO NESBO HAS SOLD OVER 50 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**No 1 Sunday Times bestseller*''Immensely enjoyable and gloriously dark'' Daily ExpressHe''s the best cop they''ve got. When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath it''s up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess. He''s also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past. He''s rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They''re all within reach. But a man like him won''t get to the top.Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He''s convinced he won''t get what is rightfully his. Unless he kills for it. ''A deliciously oppressive page-turner'' GuardianWatch out for The Jealousy Man, the new Jo Nesbo book, out nowTrade ReviewMajestically satisfying...a deliciously oppressive page-turner -- Steven Poole * Guardian *Immensely enjoyable and gloriously dark... He has accomplished that toughest of literary feats: putting his own unmistakable mark on one of Shakespeare's most celebrated plays -- Matt Gibson * Daily Express *Inventive and deeply satisfying... a dark but ultimately hopeful Macbeth, one suited to our own troubled times -- James Shapiro * New York Times Book Review *Nesbo makes excellent use of all the atmosphere of his genre, and the stakes at play are every bit as convincing as those in the original... This is Nesbo doing what he's good at -- Lucy Scholes * Independent *Macbeth as a SWAT team leader. His wife as a former prostitute. The three witches as drug dealers. It's Shakespeare's darkest tale -- reimagined by the king of Nordic noir -- Graeme Thomson * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisJeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. She published her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, at twenty-five. Over two decades later she revisited that material in her internationally bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson has written thirteen novels for adults and two previous collections of short stories, as well as children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.Trade ReviewPart love story, part philosophical treatise, part anatomical guide, Written on the Body defies categorisation, dispensing with clichés and stereotypes to forge, from the raw physicality of the body itself, a new language for love. -- Jamei Qautro * Guardian *Winterson's novels are about exploding our complacent notions of the real, breaking down received ideas of gender, time and space... John Donne wrote, "Love...makes one little room, as everywhere." Winterson's novel arrives at a similar affirmation * Time Out *An ambitious work, at once a love story and a philosophical meditation on the body...the result is a work that is consistently revelatory about the phenomenon of love * New York Times Book Review *

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Book Synopsis''Winterson is a rangy pirate, a world-swashbuckler, a plunderer of stories, literatures and hearts'' Ali Smith, Scotsman ''It''s night. I''m sitting at my screen. There''s an e-mail for me. I unwrap it. It says - Freedom, just for one night.'' Ali, or Alix, is an e-writer. They will write anything you like, but on one condition: that you are prepared to enter your story. Finally, you can be the hero of your own life. But, there is a price to pay - the risk that you might leave the story as somebody else.''Brilliant, evocative writing... Winterson never seems to put a foot wrong... It is funny, clever, entertaining and wholly delightful'' SpectatorTrade ReviewWinterson is a rangy pirate, a world-swashbuckler, a plunderer of stories, literatures and hearts -- Ali Smith * Scotsman *Gorgeously written, shockingly moving...a wonderful, unforgettable read. Buy it for someone you really love -- Simon Schama * Mail on Sunday *Winterson writes with evangelical assurance, vaulting ambition, total control...witty, original, and good at what she does * Observer *Mischievous and intelligent, determined to provoke thoughts about love's reason, and its risk * The Times *Brilliant, evocative writing... Winterson never seems to put a foot wrong... It is funny, clever, entertaining and wholly delightful * Spectator *

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Book Synopsis''A fantasy, a vivid dream...inventive and brilliant'' GuardianHenri has a passion for Napoleon - but Napoleon has a passion for chicken. As soldier and emperor butcher their way across Europe, glory falls to ruin and love turns to hate. But, when Henri encounters the red-haired, web-footed Villanelle, he discovers in her an equal. Together they abandon their pasts, and flee to the Venetian canals to meet their singular destiny in the city of chance and disguises.''A deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so.'' New York TimesTrade ReviewIt's a fantasy, a vivid dream... inventive and brilliant * Guardian *As moving and funny as it is skilful, and reflects the author's formidable appetite for life * Sunday Times *A book of great imaginative audacity and assurance...brilliantly physical (and funny) detail * Times Literary Supplement *Its concentrated, beautifully detailed prose recalls the diction of fairy tales; its plot incorporates their magic, their shrewd wit and brutality...a deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so * New York Times *Lyrical prose penetrates to the heart of things... She knows how to speak plain truth and at the same time satisfy our longing for the fabulous. She's telling you stories. Trust her * Washington Post *

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Book Synopsis**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE**''It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon...''This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer''s day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before.From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. From Red''s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red''s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century - four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home...**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**''Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing'' RachelTrade ReviewAnne Tyler is one of my favourite writers and this is a delicious book. It is like being with a dear old friend. It is very specialAnne Tyler is the most natural of novelist... I know no other novelist who draws so directly from real life, and whose work remains so uncontaminated by the shortcuts and cliches of television and Hollywood... A Spool of Blue Thread may be her best yet * Daily Mail *One of the most accomplished writers working today... A must-read * Good Housekeeping *Exquisite * The Times *Her terrain is the family, and the micro-interactions between both its members and interlopers from without; her tone is superficially uncomplicated, her insights culmulative, her mode of realist fiction essentially conventional... its power derives from the restless depths beneath its unfractured surface * Guardian *Perfects the intimate, easy style that makes reading her such a pleasure * Metro *When it comes to painting a loving, funny and yet never simplistic portrait of American family life, Anne Tyler is, and always has been, the great mistress * Financial Times *Deftly written with skilful characterisation... A master of conversation * Daily Express *A rich and perceptive examination of uneven family relationships * Yorkshire Post *Tyler's twentieth novel finds fresh fictional riches in imaginative territory she has been exploring for half a century... Atmospherically rendered, the passage of time has both entertaining and heart-rending results. She has never written with more finesse, vitality and acuteness * Sunday Times, book of the year *

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Book SynopsisLisa Jewell is the No. 1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of twenty-two novels, including The Family Upstairs, Then She Was Gone and her latest novel, None of This is True. Her novels have sold over 10 million copies in the UK and internationally, and her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives in London with her husband, two daughters, an amazing Romanian rescue dog called Daisy, and Ivy the mad orange kitten.Trade Review"Lisa Jewell's characters are so real that I finish every book half-expecting to bump into one of them. Modern, complex, intuitive, she just goes from strength to strength." Jojo Moyes "An engaging and atmospheric read, Lisa beautifully conjures up the half-child half-adult lives of young teenagers." Jane Fallon "Oh but I loved this book - a magical garden right in the centre of the city, a long, hot summer simmering away, a group of young teens, lurching between boredom and passion and ripe for their lives to start. And at its centre a dark and disturbing mystery that keeps you turning the pages long into the night. Lisa Jewell is the most compassionate storyteller. She writes with such lightness of touch, yet her books pack a powerful punch. A stunning, beautiful, mesmerising book that everyone will be reading this summer." Tamar Cohen "I was utterly gripped from the start... basically a great read." Irish Independent "Another winner. Beautiful writing, believable characters, a pacy narrative and dark secrets combine to make this a gripping read." Daily Mail

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Book SynopsisA brilliant, emotionally wrenching new novel from the author of Atonement and Amsterdam.Fiona Maye, a leading High Court judge, renowned for her fierce intelligence and sensitivity is called on to try an urgent case. For religious reasons, a seventeen-year-old boy is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life. Time is running out.She visits the boy in hospital an encounter which stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. But it is Fiona who must ultimately decide whether he lives or dies and her judgement will have momentous consequences for them both.Trade ReviewFascinatingly complex and finally heartbreaking… A quite beautiful work of fiction. * The Times *Another notable volume from one of the finest writers alive. * Washington Post *A masterclass in the power of precision and restraint … McEwan is brilliant on the details that form the backdrop to public and private tragedy. * The Sunday Times *A classic McEwan novella, swift and compelling, asking to be read in a single sitting despite its 200-odd pages… He makes it look simple yet few other writers have anything like his mastery of such prose… So skillfully composed and fluently performed, it’s a pleasure from start to finish, one not to be interrupted. * Evening Standard *The Children Act is in part a tribute to the best of the legal profession and, as a wordsmith, his deep respect for the best of their prose… The book has some landmark McEwan features of skillfully created tension. * Lancet *In typical McEwan style, The Children Act is unputdownable and hauntingly beautiful. * Khaleej Times *The Children Act is a…sophisticated exploration of how society treats children and how children’s welfare can be considered in the complex world in which we live, where issues about how children should be raised are not subject to consensus. * Legal Action *

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Book SynopsisCovering the first half of Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro''s career, these are some of the best, most touching and powerful short stories ever written.Munro can pack more into one of her stories - more subtlety, more grace, more tender twists of the human heart - than many novelists do' IndependentThis first-ever selection of Alice Munro''s stories sums up her genius. Her territory is the secrets that cackle beneath the façade of everyday lives, the pain and promises, loves and fears of apparently ordinary men and women whom she renders extraordinary and unforgettable.This volume brings together the best of Munro''s stories, from 1968 through to 1994. The second selected volume of her stories, 1995-2009 is also published by Vintage Classics.Few writers capture the moral ambiguities, murkiness, messiness - and joy - of relationships with as much empathy and grace as Munro' GuardianWinner of the Nobel Prize Trade ReviewMunro is a great realist, and her powers come from her sense of the way in which communities – especially small, socially anxious, limited ones – construct and guard their reality. -- James Wood * London Review of Books *One of the most esteemed writers in the world... Few writers capture the moral ambiguities, murkiness, messiness - and joy - of relationships with as much empathy and grace as Munro... An outstanding showcase for Munro's scrupulous, humane, unnervingly perceptive vision * Guardian *Her work is practically perfect. Any writer has to gawk when reading her because her work is very subtle and precise -- Jane SmileyThe best short story writer alive... Munro can pack more into one of her stories - more subtlety, more grace, more tender twists of the human heart - than many novelists do in a lifetime's oeuvre * Independent *One of the world's best living short-story writers... To say that she has made the short story her own and reinvigorated it somehow falls short - she has reinvented it * Observer *

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Book SynopsisFollowing on from his bestselling study of violence, The Football Factory, John King considers Britain's other obsession - sex. Formed in the chemical mists of New Year's Eve, The Sex Division sees the once sacred act of procreation at its most material, as five men devise a system based on the sexual act.Trade ReviewKing loads his characters up with enough interior life, but it's the raw energy of their interactions - the beano to Blackpool, the punch-ups, the casual fucks, the family skeletons and the unburied fantasies - that make this excellent book run -- Steve Grant * Time Out *Sexy, dirty, violent, sad, funny: in fact it has just about everything you could want from a book on contemporary working-class life in London -- Stephen Chamberlain * Big Issue *An odyssey into southern English blue-collar manners as King deconstructs the stereotype of Essex Man and his outer London contemporaries and finds rather more complex attitudes towards gender and class than the tabloid image suggests -- Teddy Jamieson * The List *The realism and political edge echoes Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff -- John Williams * GQ *

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Book SynopsisEvery so often a novel comes along which transcends whimsy with the beauty of its writing. Elizabeth McCracken''s small masterpiece is one of these'' GuardianA powerful and unique story about connection, showing that miracles can happen even across a library circulation desk.The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-eight year old librarian Peggy Cort feels as if love and life have stood her up. That is, until the day James Carlson Sweatt the ''over-tall'' eleven year old boy who''s the talk of the town walks into her library and changes her life for ever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who''s ever really understood her, and as he grows six foot five at age twelve, then seven foot, then eight so does their most singular romance. Trade ReviewThe most original and enchanting romance I have read in a long time -- Erica Wagner * The Times *McCracken avoids the temptations of easy humour and writes with great pathos and delicacy about the complexities of love * Observer *The lucid, compelling prose convinces us that this mismatched pair do become a real couple: improbably, disturbingly, and very movingly, theirs is a true love story * Sunday Times *The Giant's House is the work of a writer who is as singular and astute as the characters she creates... funny, ambitious and precise... a beautifully composed portrait of people struggling against themselves with the full force of their courage and desire * Times Literary Supplement *Every so often a novel comes along which transcends whimsy with the beauty of its writing. Elizabeth McCracken's small masterpiece is one of these * G2 *

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Book SynopsisFollowing the curves of the twentieth century, FALL ON YOUR KNEES takes us from haunted Cape Breton island in Nova Scotia through the battlefields of World War I into the emerging jazz scene in New York City, and immerses us in the lives of four unforgettable sisters. The children of a driven and ambitious father, the sisters -Kathleen, the oldest, a beautiful talent intent on a career as an opera diva; Frances, the drunken rogue and child prostitute; Lily, the pseudo-saint cripple; and Mercedes, the fervent Catholic and protector of the flock - are swept along by the tumult of events and of their own desires. This is a story of family relationships, racial strife, miracles, attempted murder, birth and eath, and an extraordinary love affair.Trade ReviewMacDonald skillfully shifts the story backward and forward in time, giving it a mythic quality that allows dark, half-buried secrets to be gracefully and chillingly revealed * New York Times *A whopper of a first novel... No fragmentation or contrived narrative devices confuse this hefty and engrossing tale * Guardian *Stunning....The story is riveting, the characters achingly human, and the writing will take your breath away....[MacDonald] has leapt into the first rank of fiction writers * Toronto Star *

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Book SynopsisThese dazzling and utterly satisfying stories explore varieties and degrees of love - filial, platonic, sexual, parental, and imagined - in the lives of apparently ordinary folk.Complete, complex, and brilliantly structured' Daily TelegraphIn fact, Munro''s characters pulse with idiosyncratic life. Under the polished surface of these unsentimental dispatches from the small-town and rural front lies a strong undertow of violence and sexuality, repressed until something snaps, with extraordinary force in some of the stories, sadly and strangely in others.Winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureWinner of the Man Booker International Prize 2009Trade ReviewShe has a touch of genius * Mail on Sunday *Whatever it is that makes some writing come alive in every phrase and sentence, Alice Munro has it... I wouldn't willingly miss one of her stories * Sunday Times *Munro has been compared with Proust, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and remains - though dazzling - quite unperturbed and unaffected, her writing smooth and supple * Financial Times *A work of great brilliance and depth... Munro's power of analysis, of sensation, and thoughts, is almost Proustian in its sureness * New Statesman *Only a few writers continue to create those full-bodied miniature universes of the old school. Some of her short stories are so ample and fulfilling that they feel like novels. They present whole landscapes and cultures, whole families of characters -- Anne Tyler

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Book SynopsisMartin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.Trade ReviewA profound work, it's also the best novel ever written about pub darts. -- John Sutherland * The Times *Martin Amis's most ambitious, intelligent and nourishing novel to date... Keith Talent is a brilliant comic creation...as a fictional minor crook, he is in the major league, lying and cheating on the scale of Greene's Pinkie Brown and Saul Bellow's Rinaldo Cantabile * Observer *An electrifying writer who likes to shock his fans and share his sharply contemporary concerns... Amis is a maddening master you need to read - the best of his generation * Mail on Sunday *London Fields, its pastoral title savagely inappropriate to its inner-city setting, vibrates, like all Amis's work, with the force fields of sinister, destructive energies. At the core of its surreal fable are four figures locked in lethal alignment * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisMartin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.Trade ReviewExhilarating...hugely enjoyable... Night Train, like everything Martin Amis has written, shines with disciplined linguistic exuberance in every syllableNight Train is both delicate and bruising - a long drawn-out blue note. The book hangs around in the mind like smoke in a jazz club * Telegraph Magazine *A virtuoso performance. Deliciously readable, highly polished... Mr Amis has created a quicksilver narrative that grabs the reader and refuses to let go * New York Times *Night Train pushes the boundaries of noir almost to the edge of darkness * Time *A work of dark romanticism, a tale of possession... prose crackling with wit and invention * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisToni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She was the author of many novels, including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, Paradise and Love. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour, in 2012 by Barack Obama. Toni Morrison died on 5 August 2019 at the age of eighty-eight.Trade ReviewA great storyteller * Guardian *Jazz blazes with an intensity more usually found in tragic poetry of the past, not in fiction today.... Morrison's voice transcends colour and creed and she has become one of America's outstanding post-war writers... A great storyteller, her characters have amazing and terrible pasts - they must find them out, or be haunted by them * Guardian *Morrison’s writing of a black romance pays its debt to blues music, the rhythms and the melancholy pleasures of which she has so magically transformed into a novel * London Review of Books *The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to black women * New York Times Book Review *Wonderful... A brilliant, daring novel... Every voice amazes * Chicago Tribune *

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Book SynopsisIan McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; Machines Like Me; and Lessons. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.Trade ReviewHaunting and compelling * The Times *No reader will begin The Comfort of Strangers and fail to finish it; a black magician is at work * New York Times *This compelling, driven novel explores what it might be like to lose yourself forever * Guardian *His writing is exact, tender, funny, voluptuous, disturbing * The Times *McEwan, that master of the taciturn macabre, so organises his narrative that, without insisting anything, every turn and glimpse is another tightening of the noose * Observer *

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Book SynopsisNow a major BBC drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch''Only Ian McEwan could write about loss with such telling honesty'' Benedict CumberbatchOn a routine trip to the supermarket with his daughter one Saturday morning, Stephen Lewis, a well-known writer of children''s books, turns his back momentarily. When he looks around again, his child is gone. In a single moment, everything is changed. The kidnapping has a devastating effect on Stephen''s life and marriage. Memories and the present become inseparable - as Stephen gets lost in daydreams of the past - and time bends back on itself, dragging Stephen''s own childhood back into the present.Trade ReviewSpooky...a wonderful novel * Observer *The Child in Time is an extraordinary achievement * Guardian *It is marvellously written, moving, serious, readable... If you want to be appalled, refreshed, exhilarated, enlivened - read it * Sunday Times *His masterpieceArtistically, morally, and politically, he excels * The Times *

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