Whether your passion is The Ancient Greeks, The Wars of The Roses or The Russian Revolution, you'll find stories of life during these eras and every other, often using factual accounts to build a fictional narrative.
Historical Fiction Books
Ebury Publishing An East End Girl
Book SynopsisWill she ever be anything more than an East End girl?Cissy Farmer longs to escape her life in London''s Docklands where times are hard and money is tight. And when she meets the debonair Langley Makepeace, her dream seems within reach. But the price of belonging in Langley''s brittle, sophisticated world could be much higher than Cissy ever imagined. Torn between Langley and her gentle childhood sweetheart, Eddie Bennet, she is forced to gamble on her future chance of happiness, a decision that will change her life forever...From the author of A Girl in Wartime and A Soldier's Girl
£9.49
Ebury Publishing Lilys War
Book SynopsisTorn between duty to her family and a last chance at love...Busy bringing up her motherless brothers and sisters, romance is the last thing on Lily Thorpe's mind. But when the handsome preacher Matt Gibson asks Lily to return with him to Australia as his wife, she finds it very hard to say no.But with rumours of war on the horizon, will she have to choose between her head and her heart? A story of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of wartime Liverpool.
£15.29
Ebury Publishing The Boleyn Reckoning
Book SynopsisLaura Andersen has one husband, four children, and a university degree in English that she puts to non-profitable use by reading everything she can lay her hands on. Books, shoes, and travel are her fiscal downfalls, which she justifies because all three take you places.' She loves the ocean (but not sand), forests (but not camping), good food (but not cooking), and shopping (there is no downside.) She lives in Massachusetts with her family. To find out more visit: http://www.lauraandersenbooks.com or follow Laura on twitter @LauraSAndersenTrade ReviewImaginative . . . an exciting, action-driven plot containing strong doses of both intrigue and romance... an original and entertaining read that’s reminiscent of the best of Philippa Gregory * Library Journal *Gripping . . . Andersen delves into an alternative Tudor England geared to rivet period fans and newcomers alike. . . . Perfect for Philippa Gregory fans * Booklist *A surprising gem and a thoroughly enjoyable read * Historical Novels Review *[The Boleyn King] alive with historical flair and drama, satisfies both curious and imaginative Tudor aficionados. . . . Her multidimensional characters are so real that readers will wish it was history and eagerly await the next in the trilogy * RT Book Reviews *A wonderfully imaginative and well-written tale of intrigue, high court politics and desperate love * Deseret News *
£13.49
Ebury Publishing A Girl in Wartime
Book SynopsisThere's no escape from the effects of war...It's June 1914 and young Connie Lovell should be helping with the war effort. Instead, she applies for a job at the London Herald, where she meets the handsome editor Stephen Clayton.Nine years her senior, she knows her family won't approve. She is helplessly drawn to him, and despite a past he won't talk about, he is undeniably attracted to her. But as the war rages on, will Stephen be forced to enlist, and can their union survive the consequences?
£14.39
Ebury Publishing Rags to Riches
Book SynopsisBut when a disgraced Amy is disowned by her parents and fiancé, Alice is the only person she can turn to…Forced to give up her life of luxury, Amy lodges with Alice’s friendly working class family.
£12.77
Ebury Publishing Elizas Child
Book SynopsisMaggie Hope was born in County Durham, during the Depression of the 1930s. She is the daughter of a coal miner and knows first-hand the hardships suffered by miners and their families during that time. Along with her three sisters, she was raised in a two-up-two-down' miner's cottage with no inside toilet. Growing up, Maggie never dreamed she could earn a living from her writing. Instead she left school at sixteen and became a nurse, collecting stories from colleagues who had served during the war. Maggie gave up nursing when she married her husband and started a family. It wasn't until she was in her 50s though that she finally began her writing career. She is now the Sunday Times bestselling author of fifteen novels.
£9.45
Random House Go In and Sink
Book SynopsisDouglas Reeman did convoy duty in the navy in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Sea. He has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty bestselling historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.Trade ReviewMasterly storytelling. * The Times *One of our foremost writers of naval fiction. * Sunday Times *
£15.29
Vintage Publishing Indigo Or Mapping The Waters
Book SynopsisInspired by The Tempest, Indigo traces the scars of colonialism across continents, family blood-lines and three centuries. Rich, sensual and magical in its use of myths and fairytales Indigo explores the intertwined histories of the Everard family and the imaginary Caribbean island where Ariel, Caliban, and his mother, the healer and dyer of indigo, Sycorax once lived.Trade ReviewA complex, glittering book * The Times *An extraordinary imaginative achievement * Times Literary Supplement *Indigo explores the nature of power, the human cost of Empire and the theme of dislocation... Vivid, gripping, intelligent * Independent on Sunday *Her prose has never been so lyrical, as she yokes Shakespearean references, colonial history and her own sensual experience of the Caribbean with a powerful feminine myth-making * Independent *
£16.14
Vintage Publishing Dusklands
Book SynopsisJ.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace, Summertime, The Childhood of Jesus and, most recently, The Schooldays of Jesus. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.Trade ReviewCoetzee's vision goes to the nerve center of being -- Nadine GordimerIts unflinching sense of loss, its claustrophobic acknowledgement of the unwilling interdependence of master and slave, and its subtle prose-style, make it an extraordinary achievement * Guardian *His writing gives off whiffs of Conrad, of Nabokov, of Golding, of the Paul Theroux of The Mosquito Coast. But he is none of these, he is a harsh, compelling voice * Sunday Times *Intense, clear and powerful. The promise, so brilliantly fulfilled in his later work, is clear in this earliest novel * Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Music Silence
Book SynopsisRose Tremain's novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Award (The Colonel's Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence) the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina in France (Sacred Country) and the South Bank Sky Arts Award (The Gustav Sonata). Her most recent novel is Lily, a Richard and Judy Book Club selection. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.Trade ReviewThe best thing from Denmark since Hamlet. * John Julius Norwich *A magnificent novel... a brilliant book which will repay many readings * The Times *She is the best historical novelist of her generation. She evokes the past with sensuality, wit and superb sleights of hand... The plot is ingenious...an unforgettable tapestry of Eros and of art -- A. N. WilsonTremain's achievement in Music & Silence is extraordinary ... A narrative as funny as it is compelling * Daily Telegraph *Tremain weaves her web of stories with great visual flair and emotional acuity: This is a fabulous cacophony of passion and despair * Metro *
£10.44
Vintage Publishing The Wapshot Chronicle
Book SynopsisMeet the Wapshots of St Botolphs. There is Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea-dog and would-be suicide; his licentious older son, Moses; and Moses''s adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly. Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, and partly based on Cheever''s adolescence in New England, The Wapshot Chronicle is a family narrative in the finest traditions of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry JamesTrade ReviewCheever's debut novel is skittish, mercurial and ringing with life * Guardian *The best introduction to Cheever's work...richly inventive and vividly told * New York Times Magazine *A tapestry woven from the threads of emotion, tragedy, comedy...and the irony so wonderfully evident in the author's short stories...a literary mosaic...Cheever is a pleasure to read * San Francisco Chronicle *A brilliantly written novel, vastly and sometimes sadly, amusing * Time *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Black Dogs
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 ReviewPowerful... Unforgettable * Sunday Telegraph *His best yet, which I should make clear is saying a great deal * Observer *Brilliant...a meditation on the intoxications of violence and the redemptive power of love * New Yorker *Superbly evocative prose... The novel's vision of Europe is acute and alive, vivid in its moral complexities * New York Times Book Review *Compassionate without resorting to sentimentality, clever without ever losing its honesty, an undisguised novel of ideas which is also Ian McEwan's most human work * Times Literary Supplement *
£9.49
Cornerstone The Forest
Book SynopsisEdward Rutherfurd was born in England, in the cathedral city of Salisbury. Educated locally, and at the universities of Cambridge, and Stanford, California, he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. After numerous attempts to write books and plays, he finally abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983, and returned to his childhood home to write Sarum. Four years later, when the book was published, it became an instant international bestseller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Since then he has written seven more bestsellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London; The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum; two novels which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century; New York; and Paris. His books have been translated into over twenty languages.Trade ReviewHugely impressive * Mail on Sunday *Exerts a hypnotic charm * Daily Mail *Fresh, exciting and insightful * The Independent *
£12.34
Cornerstone Dublin
Book SynopsisEdward Rutherfurd''s great Irish epic reveals the story of the people of Ireland through the focal point of the island''s capital city. The epic begins in pre-Christian Ireland during the reign of the fierce and powerful High Kings at Tara, with the tale of two lovers, the princely Conall and the ravishing Deirdre, whose travails echo the ancient Celtic legend of Cuchulainn. From this stirring beginning, Rutherfurd takes the reader on a graphically realised journey through the centuries. Through the interlocking stories of a powerfully-imagined cast of characters - druids and chieftains, monks and smugglers, merchants and mercenaries, noblewomen, rebels and cowards - we see Ireland through the lens of its greatest city.Trade ReviewExpertly researched, full, undemanding and highly readable account of a place he has grown to know well -- Maeve Binchy * Ireland on Sunday *The author writes with a charm and an authority that comes from considerable research this is a really handsome book * Irish Independent *The author bounds excitedly through Irish history, interweaving narrative with historical encounters. . . Rutherfurd keeps racing through the pages * Daily Express *Sublime talent. . . this is history with a human face and a fanciful soul * Good Book Guide *
£11.69
Cornerstone Just Around The Corner
Book SynopsisThis captivating and compelling East End saga, set in the run up to World War Two, is just what fans of Dilly Court, Rosie Goodwin and Donna Douglas will love. Written in the evocative style we''ve come to love from bestselling author Gilda O''Neill, you''ll feel as if you are right in the thick of the action. The perfect dose of escapism...WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT JUST AROUND THE CORNER!''Very well written - had me gripped from beginning to end'' - 5 STARS''Loved, loved, loved this book'' - 5 STARS''Wow...a must read'' - 5 STARS''Delightful'' - 5 STARS*******************************************************************WILL SHE FIND THE LOVE SHE IS LOOKING FOR?All big-hearted Katie Mehan ever wanted was health and happiness for her family and the love of her husband, Pat.But as work at the docks gets scarcer and the political unrest of
£15.29
Cornerstone The Touch
Book SynopsisColleen McCullough was born in Australia. A neurophysiologist, she established the department of neurophysiology at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, then worked as a researcher and teacher at Yale Medical School for ten years. Her writing career began with the publication of Tim, followed by The Thorn Birds, a record-breaking international bestseller. The author of over ten other novels, including the acclaimed 'Masters of Rome' series, Dr McCullough also wrote lyrics for musical theatre. Until her death in 2015 she lived on Norfolk Island in the Pacific with her husband.Trade Review"'Fast-moving and immensely readable... a page turner from start to finish' Maeve Binchy"
£10.44
Vintage Publishing A Star Called Henry
Book SynopsisBorn in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike.Trade ReviewThis is really a masterpiece * Irish Times *This is Ireland's most famous living writer tackling one of the most crucial periods in its history... A Star Called Henry has all the hallmarks of the start of a major literary portrayal of a national experience * Guardian *A vibrant work of fiction - In Doyle's ambidextrous hands, the making of modern Ireland gets a vigorous and illuminating run-down * Independent *Doyle just gets better and better... This is history evoked on an intimate, and yet earth-shaking scale, with a driving narrative that never falters. Maybe the Great American Novel remains to be written, but on the evidence of its first instalment - this is the epic Irish one, created at a high pitch of eloquence * Publisher's Weekly *The energy and full-blooded dialogue of Doyle's creations are as much in evidence here as in the best of his previous work- A Star Called Henry is billed as Volume One of The Last Roundup. It is an exhilarating beginning * Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Emperor
Book SynopsisThe Emperor Constantine crosses the Alps at the head of a great army from the Rhineland in AD 312, and marches south to take Rome from the tyrant Maxentius. As he lays siege to the city of Verona, Constantine waits for the arrival of his wife, Fausta - his enemy''s sister - whose cool detachment torments him. Emperor is a superbly imaginative reconstruction of the dramatic weeks leading up to Constantine''s triumph in Rome. Written in the form of extracts from his own journal and letters from his empress, her frivolous female companion, his cynical secretary and a Christian bishop who is travelling with the army, the novel records a train of events which will change the world. Constantine is plagued by spiritual doubts, tortured by his wife''s coldness, but he defies the omens to win a great victory at Verona and to lead his army south. On the road to Rome, the conqueror becomes the conquered as a blinding vision strikes him from his horse in an astonishing conversion to Christianity.Trade ReviewColin Thubron has chosen to present his vividly original concept of Constantine as a mosaic of fragments from letters, written orders, jottings from supposed journals of the emperor and his train and, most revealing of all, extracts from the correspondence of his lovely, tragic, inaccessible wife, Fausta * Sunday Telegraph *It is a stylish, sensitive exploration of complex people in an era of complexities, and creates vividly the climate of an over-ripe civilisation falling into self-questioning -- Mary Renault'Legionaries and their commanders, frigid empress and frivolous lady-in-waiting, and, above all, the ambitious, domineering, but also self-tormenting and restlessly questioning Constantine - all come vividly to life and persuade the reader that he is their contemporary.' * The Listener *
£11.69
Vintage Publishing Tulip Fever
Book Synopsis''A gorgeous novel'' Mail on SundayFrom the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel comes a thrilling story of power, lust and deception...Seventeenth-century Amsterdam - a city in the grip of tulip fever.Sophia''s husband Cornelis is one of the lucky ones grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his beautiful bride. But as the portrait grows, so does the passion between Sophia and the painter; and ambitions, desires and dreams breed an intricate deception and a reckless gamble.Now a major film starring Oscar winners Dame Judi Dench, Alicia Vikander and Christoph Waltz and adapted for the screen by Sir Tom Stoppard.Trade ReviewA story of love, deceit, changelings, and mistaken identity worthy of a Restoration dramatist * Daily Mail *A sumptuous and enthralling novel about art, love, illusion and money...with the denouement of a classic * The Times *A byzantine plot that hurtles towards disaster, while retaining the polished veneer of a Dutch interior * Harpers & Queen *Sensuous and masterly...a gorgeous novel * Mail on Sunday *Clever, spry and sad in equal measure...a pacy plot whose twists and shifts of viewpoint make for much anxious page-turning * Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing For Whom the Bell Tolls
Book SynopsisErnest Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899, the second of six children. In 1917, he joined the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The following year, he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was badly wounded but decorated for his services. He returned to America in 1919, and married in 1921. In 1922, he reported on the Greco-Turkish war before resigning from journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris, associating with other expatriates like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. He was passionately involved with bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing. Recognition of his position in contemporary literature came in 1954 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.Trade ReviewHis passionately committed, flawed masterpiece * Observer *A sparse, masculine, world-weary meditation on death, ideology and the savagery of war in general, and the Spanish civil war in particular * Sunday Telegraph *For Whom the Bell Tolls allowed us to actually see the experience of an irregular struggle, from the political and military point of view...That book became a familiar part of my life. And we always went back to it, consulted it, to find inspiration * Observer *I read as a kid, of course, but it didn't get me like that till I read For Whom the Bell Tolls. I was very taken with that book. I still reread sections, though I'm now reading it not for the thrill of the story but for the technique and craft of it. * Daily Mail *The best book Hemingway has written * New York Times *
£9.49
Random House A Trust Betrayed
Book SynopsisCandace Robb has read and researched medieval history for many years, having studied for a Ph. D in Medieval and Anglo-Saxon Literature. She is also the author of nine Owen Archer novels and tthree Margaret Kerr Mysteries.
£14.39
Cornerstone Cryptonomicon
Book SynopsisA gripping and page-turning thriller that explores themes of power, information, secrecy and war in the twentieth century. From the author of the three-volume historical epic ''The Baroque Cycle'' and Seveneves.In his legendary, sprawling masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - a mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to Detachment 2702, an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists. Some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt.Their mission is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy''s fabled Enigma code. Waterhouse is flung into a cryptographic chess match against his German counterpart - one where every move determines the fate of thousands.In the pTrade ReviewCryptonomicon, a novel of such ambition and intensity that most modern fiction looks timid and shallow in comparison... * Guardian *Cryptonomicon was dauntingly vast: brilliant, splenetic, paranoid and beguiling in roughly equal measures... Stephenson's...thrilling fluency * TLS *An audaciously conceived tale of code-making and code-breaking * New York Times *A brilliant patchwork of codebreaking mathematicians and their descendants who are striving to create a data-haven in the Philippines...trust me on this one * Guardian *Pynchon meets Gibson in the biggest novel of the season * Time Out *
£11.69
Cornerstone The Confusion
Book SynopsisAmazingly, they succeed - leaving some very unhappy men behind who vow to hunt down the vagabonds and bring them to justice, no matter the cost.Meanwhile, back in France, the beautiful Eliza - toast of Versailles and spy extraordinaire - attempts to return to London with her baby, a child whose paternity is shrouded in mystery.Trade ReviewIdeas about currency and calculus become thrilling because of the way Stephenson incorporates them into his story... Huge in scope - rich in detail... This weird, wonderful collision of scholarship and storytelling has no peer * Time Out *A rip-roaring, swashbuckling Romance with a capital R ... A blood-soaked, silver-plated depiction of 17th-century life from both ends of the economic scale, and with enough headlong, balls-to-the-wall buccaneering and Machiavellian plotting to satiate the most jaded of palates * Ink *Stephenson excels in marrying geekspeak wtih riotous action. When he describes a battle or a duel, his prose acquires thrilling panache... Jack Shaftoe is magnificent, a swashbuckling hero with a foul mouth and few morals, and his adventures are most appealing * Guardian *The definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk-love story. No easy feat, that * Entertainment Weekly *
£11.69
Vintage Publishing The Enchantress of Florence
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 brilliant, fascinating, generous novel...wonderful" -- Ursula le Guin Guardian "A wild and whirling novel" Observer "For Rushdie, as for the artists he writes about, the pen is a magician's wand. There is more magic than realism in this latest novel. But it is, I think, one of his best. If The Enchantress of Florence doesn't win this year's Man Booker I'll curry my proof copy and eat it" Financial Times "My first desire on finishing it was to go back and re-read it. Like all of Rushdie's work, the playfulness, the passion, the erudition and the sensuousness go hand in hand. It's immensely rich...it's one of his best" Scotsman "An exuberant mix of fantasy and history" Daily Mail
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Colour
Book SynopsisJoseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek he is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of ''the colour'', are violently rushing to their destinies. By turns both moving and terrifying, The Colour is about a quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love and explore the sacrifices to be made in the pursuit of happiness.Trade ReviewTremain is a magnificent storyteller with an enormous story to tell * Independent on Sunday *This is a writer whose breadth of imagination and supple prose transcend the genre: she is one of the finest writers in England * Daily Telegraph *Tremain has produced her own wondrous piece of gold * Scotsman *A fabulous work, bravely imaginative, deeply moving, surprising, invigorating and satisfying * Independent *This is a beautifully crafted book - at once a gripping adventure story and a compelling portrayal of human emotion at its bravest and its most vulnerable * Economist *
£10.44
Cornerstone A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Book SynopsisBetty Smith was born in 1896 and died in 1972. She wrote four novels, including A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.Trade ReviewA profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life . . . If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience... It is a poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships. * New York Times *This story radiates life. * Daily Telegraph *One of the books of the century * New York Public Library *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Other Side of the Bridge
Book Synopsis**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE**A powerful, heart-breaking story about tempting fate and living with the consequencesArthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart.Arthur is older, shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father''s farm. Jake is younger, handsome and reckless, a dangerous man to know.When Laura arrives in their rural community, the fragile balance of the brothers'' rivalry is pushed to the edge of catastrophe...''An enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate'' Guardian''Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town'' The TimesTrade ReviewA beautiful read, on every level * Independent on Sunday *Like the great 19th-century novelists of provincial life, Mary Lawson is fluent in the desperate intensity of the small, individual dramas of respectable people - and she paints an eloquent picture * Sunday Telegraph *Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town * The Times *Discreetly powerful * Daily Telegraph *This is a fine book - an enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate * Guardian *
£10.44
Cornerstone Q
Book SynopsisSet in Reformation Europe, Q begins with Luther''s nailing of his 95 theses on the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg. Q traces the adventures and conflicts of two central characters: an Anabaptist, a member of the most radical of the Protestant sects and the anarchists of the Reformation, and a Catholic spy and informer, on their thrilling journey across Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The four young writers who shelter behind the pseudonym Luther Blissett have created a world of intrigue, violence and intense political and religious passion. Far from the traditional example of historical fiction, Q is the stuff of which cults are made.Trade ReviewIt bracingly reanimates an era of frenzy that longed to burn the world clean * The Guardian *The mud and blood, visions and ideals of 16th-century Europe come back to gruesome, glorious life * The Independent *Big and bloody and breathtaking: a crush of colour and crowds, exotic locations and war. * The Times *Imagine Umberto Eco's knack for the swashbuckling thriller-of-ideas crossed with an artful touch of the Le Carr's - it boasts pace, colour, excitement and suspense to spare- Q works like a charm as a sordid, splendid period romp. * Independent *If ever there was a novel that deserved to win prizes, accolades and plaudits, it is Q - A rich, inventive and immensely powerful book - Q is a great novel, one that tells us about ourselves and how we came to be here. * Scotland on Sunday *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Fencing Master
Book SynopsisArturo Perez-Reverte was born in Cartagena in 1951. Since the publication of The Fencing Master, his first novel, Perez-Reverte has become one of Europe's bestselling authors. The Flanders Panel was awarded the Grand Prix Annuel de Litterature Policiere in France. His novel, The Dumas Club, has been made into the film The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp.Trade ReviewYou will want to reach the book's nearly perfect ending in a single sitting * Time Out *The author is in the best sense a romantic and to read him is to rediscover the delights of Dumas and Conan Doyle -- Amanda Craig * The Times *As assured and elegant as Don Jaime's sword thrusts -- Stephanie Merritt * Observer *A delight... the thriller as it out to be -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Diary of an Ordinary Woman
Book SynopsisMargaret Forster presents the ''edited'' diary of a woman, born in 1901, whose life spans the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s her story moves on to social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London. Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women''s lives from WWI to Greenham Common and beyond. A triumph of resolution and evocation, this is a beautifully observed story of an ordinary woman''s life - a narrative where every word rings true.Trade ReviewA highly enjoyable read: well-informed, gripping...an overview of the period seen from the underside * Sunday Telegraph *Not only is the background of social and political change meticulously accurate...but there is everything one would expect from a well-kept diary. This is fiction: yet it is true * Guardian *A beautifully crafted novel about the cost of war... Forster is as distinguished a biographer and memoir-writer as she is a novelist. She is an old hand at making a story out of the fragments of a life * Daily Telegraph *We believe in Millicent whole-heartedly and come to love her - she has a heroism that George Eliot would recognise. It may be fiction, but it's also - convincingly, tragically and often exhilaratingly - real life * Independent on Sunday *A richly textured, skilfully structured and highly enjoyable novel by an experienced writer at the peak of her powers * Times Literary Supplement *
£10.44
Vintage Publishing Times Arrow
Book SynopsisTod. T. Friendly is living his life backwards. Doctor Friendly has just died, but after weeks of improving in the hospital, he is sent home to his affable, melting-pot, primary-colour existence in suburban America. From the fresh-cut lawns of his retirement to the hustle of New York, and then the boat back to war-torn Europe, Friendly carries with him a secret. Trapped in his body from grave to cradle, Friendly's consciousness can only watch as he struggles to make sense of the good doctor's most ambitious project yet the final solution.SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE''Amis''s most daring and ambitious novel'' Daily Telegraph Trade ReviewAmis's backwards world is rigorously imagined. It is a world of pathos and cruel hilarity - but the crux, the test of his vision, is what he does with Auschwitz * Guardian *The devastatingly sustained black irony stands comparison with Swift's A Modest Proposal. It is, I think, Amis's finest achievement to date * Financial Times *Extraordinary - Ironic inversion is essentially a comic device, but its trickery here yields results that are rigorously grave * Independent on Sunday *An icy, hard read - Amis is at his intriguing, powerful and heedful best * Time Out *Amis's most daring and ambitious novel * Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Book of Salt
Book SynopsisIn a compelling novel that takes the reader on a strange journey from Indochina to Paris, the Vietnamese cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas reveals his own fascinating story-Paris, 1934. Binh has accompanied his employers to the station for their departure to America. His own destination is unclear: will he go with his ''Mesdames'', stay in France, or return to his native Vietnam? Binh fled his homeland in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the personal cook at the famous apartment on the rue de Fleurs. Binh is a lost soul, an exile and an alien, a man of musings, memories and possibly lies- Tastes, oceans, sweat, tears - The Book of Salt is a an inspired novel about food and exile, love and betrayal.Trade ReviewIt is beautifully written, a cooking up of love and self to feed the devouring appetites of Gerturde Stein and Alice B. Toklas that is nothing less than a masterpiece of delicate and -naturally- existentialist hedonism. -- Andro Linklater * The Spectator *The Book of Salt reminded me of how thrilling really fine writing can be, and how rarely one sees it -- Sarah Waters
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Thursbitch
Book SynopsisA gripping time-slip novel by the author of the 2022 Booker Prize-longlisted Treacle WalkerHere John Turner was cast away in a heavy snow storm in the night in or about the year 1755. The print of a woman''s shoe was found by his side in the snow where he lay dead. So reads an enigmatic memorial stone, high on the bank of a prehistoric Pennine track in Cheshire, a mystery that lives on in the surrounding hill farms. John Turner was a packman. With his train of horses he carried salt and silk, travelling distances incomprehensible to his community. John brought ideas as well as gifts, from market town to market town, from places as distant as the campfires of the Silk Road.In the twenty-first century, two hundred and fifty years after John''s life, Ian and Sal''s world resounds with the echo John''s death. Walking on the moor one day they slip between time and are lost somewhere between Jack''s vanished world and their own. This poTrade ReviewEerie and immaculately written * Observer *A rare flight of the imagination - and an unforgettable book * Metro *The land does indeed seem alive thanks to Garner's acute sense of place and his delight in language...This novel crackles with linguistic life * Sunday Times *Garner's book is only a slim volume, yet in the ideas and possibilities it suggests, it punches well above its weight * Sunday Herald *The experience of reading Thursbitch is so overwhelming that, after closing the book, it remains more real than anything around one... His art reaches out from the society of ancestors... with trepidation undoubtedly but also with a transforming, youthful hope * Independent *
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Cornerstone Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Book Synopsis________________________________The first book in Diana Gabaldon''s LORD JOHN GREY series, set in the same world as her OUTLANDER novelsIt''s 1758 and Europe is in turmoil - the Seven Years War is taking hold and London is ripe with deceit. The enigmatic Lord John Grey, a nobleman and high-ranking officer in His Majesty''s Army, pursues a clandestine love affair and a deadly family secret. Grey''s father, the Duke of Pardloe, shot himself just days before he was to be accused of being a Jacobite traitor. Now, seventeen years on, the family name has been redeemed; but an impending marriage revives the scandal. Lord John knows that as Whitehall whispers, rumours all too often lead their victims to the wails of Newgate prison - and to the gallows. From barracks and parade-grounds to the bloody battlefields of Prussia, Grey faces danger and forbidden passions in his search for the truth. But it is in the stony fells of the Lake District that he finds the man who may hold the key to his quest: the enigmatic Jacobite prisoner Jamie Fraser. Eighteenth-century Europe is brought startlingly to life in this compelling adventure mystery.Trade ReviewGabaldon provides a rich, abundantly researched, entirely readable portrait of life among the English upper classes in the 1750s. From London's literary salons and political intrigue to fearsome battle scenes in the Seven Years' War, her writing is always vivid and often lyrical * The Washington Post *
£10.44
Cornerstone The System Of The World
Book SynopsisAs Daniel and Newton conspire, an increasingly vicious struggle is waged for England's Crown: who will take control when the ailing queen dies?Tories and Whigs clash as one faction jockeys to replace Queen Anne with 'The Pretender' James Stuart, and the other promotes the Hanoverian dynasty of Princess Caroline.Trade ReviewNeal Stephenson has saved the best until last with The System of the World, a fittingly breathtaking conclusion to his Baroque Cycle, implausibly trumping all of the trilogy's previous strengths, but unfortunately introducing one weakness in that the whole rambunctiously magnificent undertaking had to end -- Christopher Brookmyre * Glasgow Herald *Truly remarkable * LA Times *Historical fiction was never this much fun - or this successful * Entertainment Weekly *
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Cornerstone Frederica
Book SynopsisAuthor of over fifty books, Georgette Heyer is the best-known and best-loved of all historical novelists, who made the Regency period her own. Her first novel, The Black Moth, published in 1921, was written at the age of seventeen to amuse her convalescent brother; her last was My Lord John. Although most famous for her historical novels, she also wrote eleven detective stories. Georgette Heyer died in 1974 at the age of seventy-one.Trade ReviewIf you want to escape lockdown completely, then I recommend any novel by Georgette Heyer, or indeed, all her novels. They are absolutely delicious tales of Regency heroes, winsome heroines, fops, dandies, dastardly baddies and lots of sumptuous descriptions of silk-lined bonnets, cravats and breeches. Utter, immersive escapism. Try starting off with Frederica. -- SOPHIE KINSELLA * Hello! magazine *My favourite historical novelist -- stylish, romantic, sharp, and witty. Her sense of period is superb, her heroines are enterprising, and her heroes dashing. I owe her many happy hours -- Margaret DrabbleTriumphantly good -- India KnightWonderful characters, elegant, witty writing, perfect period detail, and rapturously romantic -- Katie FfordeA writer of great wit and style * Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing In the Heart of the Country
Book SynopsisJ.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace, Summertime, The Childhood of Jesus and, most recently, The Schooldays of Jesus. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.Trade ReviewA powerful study of lust, degradation and fantasy * Observer *It says something about the loneliness, about the craving for love, about the relation between master and slave and between white and black, and about man's earthly anguish and longing for salvation - in a way you do not easily escape from once it has gripped you -- Andre BrinkThe writing and mood are a remarkable piece of sustained intensity... One false word could have ruined this short tour de force completely. It never does * Daily Telegraph *An intellectual lyric which sings the absence of history, the electric lull before history breaks... As a piece of cultural psychoanalysis and diagnosis, it's glitteringly precise -- Tom Paulin
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Vintage Publishing The Railway
Book SynopsisSet mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town''s alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colourful lives offer a unique and comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tatars and Gypsies. At the heart of both the town and the novel stands the railway station - a source of income and influence, and a connection to the greater world beyond the town. Rich and picaresque, The Railway chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.Trade ReviewA wonderfully engaging novel -- Melissa McClements * Financial Times *Imagine Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude on the empty plains of central Asia...The Railway is a bold and inventive, if damning, whirl through Central Asia's 20th-century history -- Charlotte Hobson * Daily Telegraph *It is a work of rare beauty - an utterly readable, compelling book -- Craig Murray * New Statesman *A poet's novel, full of memorable descriptive passages and heart-wrenching asides * Independent *All picaresque exuberance, a jumble of influences from Persian to Soviet and beyond -- Catherine Lockerbie * Sunday Herald *
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Vintage Publishing Ascent
Book SynopsisA truly stunning novel of one man''s dangerous obsession with immortality, from the BAFTA award-winning creator of Bodyguard and Line of Duty and co-creator of the graphic novel Sleeper.ONE OF THE GUARDIAN''S ''1000 NOVELS EVERYONE MUST READ'' ''A completely gripping, read-at-once novel'' The Times Yefgenii Yeremin is a flyer and a phantom. Destined to go down in Soviet history books as ''Ivan the Terrible'', the most deadly fighter pilot of the Korean War, one moment of madness sees Yefgenii throwing his reputation to the wind. Exiled to a remote Arctic base, his name unknown and victories uncelebrated, he must endure a fate worse than death: anonymity. But when a man arrives from Moscow''s Space Committee in search of a volunteer prepared to sacrifice himself for his country, Yefgenii seizes his one last chance of immortality.Trade ReviewA completely gripping, read-at-once novel -- Erica Wagner * The Times *Hold on tight and enjoy the ride... Tremendous stuff * Independent *One of the most potent and unusual works of literary fiction I've read in years... Mercurio's Yefgenii is as real as anyone you've ever cared about. And care you will -- Michael Faber * Guardian *A seat-of-the-pants ride through the life of top Soviet fighter ace with his sights set on the Moon, from an author whose sights are set just as high * Esquire *A Russian version of The Right Stuff... Riveting * Daily Telegraph *
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Vintage Publishing Final Passage
Book SynopsisCaryl Phillips was born in St Kitts and now lives in London and New York. He has written for television, radio, theatre and cinema and is the author of twelve works of fiction and non-fiction. Crossing the River was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize and Caryl Phillips has won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, as well as being named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 1992 and one of the Best of Young British Writers 1993. A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2004 and Dancing in the Dark was shortlisted in 2006.Trade ReviewThe Final Passage marks the debut of a talented writer...Phillips writes a nicely elegant prose, has a sharply observant eye, and the effect is truthful, modest and convincing * Guardian *Like Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Phillips writes of times so heady and chaotic and of characters so compelling that time moves as if guided by the moon and dreams * Los Angeles Times Book Review *One of the literary giants of our time * New York Times *
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Vintage Publishing Sophies Choice
Book SynopsisIn this extraordinary novel, Stingo, an inexperienced twenty-two year old Southerner, takes us back to the summer of 1947 and a boarding house in a leafy Brooklyn suburb. There he meets Nathan, a fiery Jewish intellectual; and Sophie, a beautiful and fragile Polish Catholic. Stingo is drawn into the heart of their passionate and destructive relationship as witness, confidant and supplicant. Ultimately, he arrives at the dark core of Sophie''s past: her memories of pre-war Poland, the concentration camp and - the essence of her terrible secret - her choice.Trade ReviewA masterpiece, [which leaves] more conventional treatments of the Holocaust, such as Schindler's List, looking obtuse and sentimental * The Times *William Styron's Sophie's Choice is a landmark of mid-20th-century American fiction - an impressively fat novel that most literate Americans claim to have read even if they haven't * Sunday Telegraph *A compassionate, brilliantly written novel * The Times *A weighty, passionate novel . . . courageous [and] masterly * NY Times *Styron is a writer's writer, capable of setting a pastoral idyll in Brooklyn, and the traumas narrated occur alongside a classic American coming-of-age story -- Xan Brooks * Guardian, 1000 novels everyone must read *
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Cornerstone The Witching Hour
Book SynopsisSOON TO BE A MAJOR TV SHOW, FROM THE NETWORK BEHIND THE WALKING DEAD ''[W]hen I found Rice''s work I absolutely loved how she took that genre and (...) made [it] feel so contemporary and relevant'' Sarah Pinborough, bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes''[Rice wrote] in the great tradition of the gothic'' Ramsey Campbell, bestselling author of The Hungry MoonOn the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking. And the witching hour begins...Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches - a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being. A hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult across four centuries, by the spellbinding, bestselling author of The VampTrade ReviewCompelling... Sensuous... Engrossing... Rich * Wall Street Journal *Vintage Rice - lush prose, dense atmosphere, steamy sex, gothic tension * San Francisco Chronicle *Morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy * Publishers Weekly *
£12.99
Cornerstone Lasher
Book SynopsisSoon to be a major TV seriesAt the centre of Anne Rice's brilliant novel, the beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, must flee from the darkly brutal, yet irresistible demon known as Lasher.Trade ReviewBehind all the velvet drapes and gossamer winding sheets, this is an old-fashioned family saga - Rice's descriptive writing is so opulent it almost begs to be read by candlelight * Washington Post Book World *The sequel and conclusion to Rice's The Witching Hour shows Rice at her best ... The novel lights up with rocket blast * Kirkus Reviews *Erotic ... Eerie ... Horrifying ... A tight tale of the occult in present-day New Orleans * Denver Post *
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Cornerstone Dictator
Book SynopsisRobert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.Trade ReviewTriumphant, compelling and deeply moving…the finest fictional treatment of Ancient Rome in the English language. They are distinguished by the mastery of the sources, sympathetic imagination, political intelligence and narrative skill…It’s a wonderful, dramatic, story, wonderfully told * Allan Massie *Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy ends in grand style…the culmination of 12 years work and a remarkable literary achievement * Observer *The book works…more than that; at times it sings… Thrillers are supposed to thrill, but few really do raise your heart rate and short-circuit your critical faculties…Exhilarating…This trilogy deserves the highest compliment that can be paid to a work of historical fiction * The Times *Robert Harris completes his wonderful trilogy based on the life of Cicero. I haven’t enjoyed Roman history more since Robert Graves’s I, Claudius * Guardian, Book of the Year *Harris’s fascination with politics galvanises his impressive knowledgeableness into compulsive fiction * The Sunday Times, Books of the Year *
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Vintage Publishing Oh Play That Thing
Book SynopsisIt''s 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America...Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.Trade ReviewThe words crackle and fizz - a dazzling evocation of the Jazz Age... Magical and marvellous * Independent on Sunday *A virtuoso of the sentence...Doyle wonderfully recreates a world of flophouses and speakeasies, flappers and bootleggers * Guardian *Doyle's performance is, again, extraordinary for the richness of allusion, the facility with which history is dovetailed with invention, the energy of the prose * Daily Telegraph *Brilliantly imagined... Utterly magnificent, the finest work he has done * Sunday Tribune *Kicks off at a furious lick and just gets faster, hotter, louder. Hugely, unremittingly entertaining * Scotsman *
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Vintage Publishing Jacobs Room
Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography. After his death in 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. Three years later, her first novel The Voyage Out was published, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). These first novels show the development of Virginia Woolf's distinctive and innovative narrative style. It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press with the publication of the co-authored Two Stories in 1917, hand-printed in the dining room of their house in Surrey. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia WTrade ReviewJacob, of whom people speak, of whom they think, but who is never shown. And yet that denial of presence on the part of the author makes of him one of the most living presences in world literature. It’s a remarkable achievement. * New Statesman *Virginia Woolf stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realisation of experimental achievements that have completely broken with tradition * New York Times *
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Vintage Publishing Orlando
Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf (Author) Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was born in London. She became a central figure in The Bloomsbury Group, an informal collective of British writers, artists and thinkers. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. She wrote many works of literature which are now considered masterpieces, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and The Waves.Margaret Reynolds (Introducer) Margaret Reynolds is a writer, academic, critic and broadcaster. Her critical edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay prize. Other books include The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories, The Sappho Companion, Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology (with Angela Leighton) and a series of study guides on contemporary writers, Vintage Living Texts. She is Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of LondonTrade ReviewOrlando is the wittiest little book, a pleasure: it makes me laugh every time I read itUndoubtedly Virginia Woolf's most intense and one of the most singular [novels] of our era
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Random House Little Girl Lost
Book SynopsisIt is a cold night and Sylvie Dugdale is weeping as she walks by the Mersey. A figure approaches and, dodging aside to avoid him, she falls into the river. Constable Brendan O''Hara, just coming off duty, sees the girl''s plight and dives in to rescue her. He is dazzled by her beauty but Sylvie''s husband is in prison and the closeness that Brendan soon longs for is impossible.Sylvie has to escape from Liverpool, so Brendan arranges for her to stay with his cousin Caitlin in Dublin until it is safe to return. There she meets Maeve, a crippled girl from the slums, who will change all their lives when a little girl is lost ...
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