AARONVITCH, Ben Rivers of London ‘My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just a probationary constable in the Metropolitan Police Service. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England.'
ABULHAWA, Susan Mornings in Jenin Richly told and full of humanity, 'Mornings in Jenin' forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining political conflict of our time.
ACHEBE, Chinua Things Fall Apart Things Fall Apart' tells the story of Okonkwo, an important man in the Igbo tribe in the days when white men were first on the scene. Okonkwo becomes exiled from his tribe, as a result of his pride and his fears, with tragic consequences.
ACKROYD, Peter The Lambs of London Peter Ackroyd's latest novel, embroils Charles and Mary Lamb in a pungent tale of Shakespearean plagiarism. The pair are at the centre of Ackroyd's new novel, which returns to the literary plagiarism territory of Chatterton.
ACKROYD, Peter Shakespeare: a life Peter Ackroyd's method is to position Shakespeare in the close context of his world. In this way, he not only richly conjures up the texture of Shakespeare's life, but also imparts an amazing amount of vivid, interesting material about place, period and background.
ADAMS, Poppy The Behaviour of Moths Ginny watches & waits for her younger sister to return to the crumbling mansion that was once their childhood home. Vivien has not stepped foot in the house since she left, 47 years ago; Ginny, the reclusive lepidopterist, has rarely ventured outside it. The remembrance of their youth, of loss, & of old rivalries plays across Ginny's mind.
ADAMSON, Gil The Outlander On a moonlit night in 1903, a mysterious young woman flees alone across the Canadian wilderness, one quick step ahead of her pursuers. Mary Boulton is 19 years old, half mad, and widowed - by her own hand. Tearing through the forest, she is desperate, and she is certain of one thing only - that her every move is being traced.
ADICHIE, Chimamanda Ngozi Americanah From the award-winning author of 'Half of a Yellow Sun', a powerful story of love, race and identity. As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race.
ADICHIE, Chimamanda Ngozi Half of a yellow sun Set in Nigeria during the 1960s, this novel contains three main characters who get swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. It is about Africa, about the end of colonialism, about class and race, and the ways in which love can complicate these things.
ADICHIE, Chimamanda Ngozi The Thing Around Your Neck The stories in this collection from Orange-Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie straddle the cultures of Nigeria and the West. Her characters battle with the responsibilities of modern life, a world in which identity is too often compromised.
ADIE, Kate Fighting on the Home Front Best selling author and award winning former BBC Chief News Correspondent Kate Adie, reveals the ways in which women’s lives changed during World War One and what the impact has been for women in its centenary year.
ADIE, Kate Nobody’s Child Kate Adie uncovers the extraordinary, moving and inspiring stories of children without mother or father, any knowledge of who they might be, or even a name to call their own.
ADIE, Kate The Kindness of Strangers Kate Adie has reported from many of the world's trouble spots since she joined the BBC in 1969. This autobiography covers her experiences in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Tiananmen Square and the Gulf War of 1991, revealing her extraordinarily demanding life at the heart of the action.
ADIGA, Aravind White Tiger Aravind Adiga's extraordinary and brilliant first novel takes the form of a series of letters to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, from Balram Halwai, the Bangalore businessman who is the self-styled “White Tiger” of the title. Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent, and on the eve of a state visit by Jiabao, our entrepreneur Halwai wishes to impart something of the new India to the Chinese premier .
AKUNUI, Boris The Winter Queen Set during the 19th century in Russia, Boris Akunin's mystery involves the death of a law student who commits suicide in broad daylight in Moscow's Alexander Gardens. Erast Fandorin is the gentleman sleuth who is called in to investigate what drove the student to do such a terrible thing.
ALAGIAH, George A Passage to Africa 'A Passage to Africa' is George Alagiah's catalogue of atrocities crafted into a portrait of Africa infused with hope, insight and courage. His viewpoint is spiked with the freshness of the young George on his arrival in Ghana.
ALBERY, Nicholas Poem for the Day 366 inspirational poems from around the world, with each poem placed on the day or season of the year deemed most appropriate or to commemorate an event such as a birthday or deathday of the poet.
ALBOM, Mitch The Five People you Meet in Heaven A beautifully written first novel that addresses the meaning of life - and life after death.
ALDERMAN, Naomi The Liar’s Gospel A retelling of the death of Jesus, 'The Liars' Gospel' is full of sex, violence, intrigue and betrayal.
ALDERMAN, Naomi Disobedience An insightful take on the search for love, tolerance and faith in a tightly-knit Jewish community in London, 'Disobedience' follows the story of Ronit, who is returning to the capital on the occasion of the funeral of her estranged father.
Alexander, Kier The Ruby Slippers Old Rosa, the bag lady, shuffles along the streets of New York, stinking, silent and shunned by man and beast. Time and again her nephew, Michael Marcinkus the grocer, has tried to help - but she remains unknowable, hushed inside her hulk. On the day of the St. Patrick's Day Parade, she is in a terrible accident. As she lies in a coma, Mr. Marcinkus visits her squalid flat and unearths something remarkable from the monstrous piles of junk: two glittering pieces of Hollywood history.
ALI, Monica Brick Lane In this tale of two Muslim sisters Monica Ali explores how they live out their own personal tragedies. One lives in a tower block in London's East End whilst the other lives in a Bangladeshi village.
ALLNATT, Judith A Mile of River Jess lives on a remote farm with her brutal father. Her mother left years ago and Jess, just wanting to be a normal teenager, is struggling with the roles of mother figure to her brother, and skivvy for her father. Daydreaming about her mother's return, Jess finds her old diary and uncovers the shocking truth about her disappearance.
ALLNATT, Judith The Moon Fields Hidden in a soldier's tin box are a painting, a pocket watch, and a dance card - keepsakes of three lives. It is 1914. George Farrell cycles through the tranquil Cumberland fells to deliver a letter, unaware that it will change his life. George has fallen for the rich and beautiful daughter at the Manor House, Miss Violet, but when she lets slip the contents of the letter George is heartbroken to find that she is already promised to another man.
ALLNATT, Judith The Poet’s Wife It is 1841. Patty is married to John Clare: peasant poet, genius and madman.travelling home one day, Patty is shocked to find her husband sitting, footsore and weary, on the side of the road, having absconded from an asylum in Essex over 80 miles away.
AMIS, Kingsley Lucky Jim Lucky Jim is the tale of university lecturer Jim Dixon who has to navigate the stumbling blocks of life at a red brick university as he attempts to climb the social ladder to a moderately successful future.
ANAM, Tahmima The Good Muslim One hot afternoon in a remote Bangladeshi village, a telegram arrives for Maya Haque. Eight years before, a devastating war tore Maya's country - and her family - apart. Now Maya realises it is time to return home at last. She arrives to find that everything has changed.
ANGELOU, Maya I Know why the Caged Bird Sings In this, the first volume of her autobiography, writer and poet Maya Angelou reflects on her childhood spent growing up in the American South of the 1930s. There she learned the power of the white townsfolk and suffered the trauma of rape.
APPELFELD, Aharon Blooms of Darkness The ghetto in which the Jews have been confined is being liquidated by the Nazis, and 11-year-old Hugo is brought by his mother to the local brothel, where one of the prostitutes, Mariana, has agreed to hide him. As the memories of his family and friends grow dim, Hugo falls in love with Mariana.
ARMITAGE, Simon Walking Home Walking Home' describes Simon Armitage's extraordinary, yet ordinary, journey. It's a story about Britain's remote and overlooked interior - the wildness of its landscape and the generosity of the locals who sustained him on his journey. It's about facing emotional and physical challenges, and sometimes overcoming them.
ARNOLD, Gaynor Girl in a Blue Dress Set in the Victorian era, this is the story of the widow of a celebrity author. The funeral of Alfred Gibson has taken place at Westminster Abbey. His wife of 20 years, Dorothea, has not been invited. She looks back on their marriage - to the happy times as well as the bad.
ARNOLD, Gaynor Lying Together Stretching faultlessly from Paris to inner-city Birmingham, from the present day to the 1940s, these stories explore the daily misunderstandings and self-deceits, the secrets and lies that seep into all our lives.
ASHWORTH, Jenn Cold Light This is the tale of three 14-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe.
ASHWORTH, Jenn A Kind of Intimacy A darkly comic tale, 'A Kind of Intimacy' is an offbeat and ironic study of misunderstandings. It traces the dark possibilities of best intentions going awry, and gives an unsettling glimpse into a clumsy young woman who has too much in common with the rest of us to be written off as a monster.
ASKWITH,Richard Feet in the Clouds: a Tale of Fell Running and Obsession Fell running - long-distance races up and down mountains - is a mass participation sport in areas like the Lake District and Snowdonia. Here, the author describes the season he spent running many of the great races and of the many characters he met along the way.
ASTLEY, Neil Staying Alive Staying Alive includes many of the great modern love poems and elegies, but it also shows the power of poetry in celebrating the ordinary miracle, taking you on a journey around many of the different aspects of everyday life explored in poems.
ASTLEY, Neil The World Record This is an anthology of poetry featuring poets from over 200 countries taking part in the 2012 London Olympics.
ATHILL, Diana Somewhere Towards the End It is a remarkable memoir that recalls Athill's youthful love affairs, her time in publishing and her current passions, gardening and drawing; most of all, though, it is an account of ageing and what it means to be old in modern Britain. While in her Sixties, Athill still felt she was "in hailing distance of middle age"; it was only when she turned seventy that she began to realise that she was "old".
ATHILL, Diana Instead of a Book Diana Athill's letters to the American poet Edward Field reveal a sharply intelligent woman with a brilliant sense of humour, a keen eye for the absurd, a fierce loyalty and a passionate zest for life. The letters cover 30 years of Diana's life.	ATHILL, Diana Instead of a Book Diana Athill's letters to the American poet Edward Field reveal a sharply intelligent woman with a brilliant sense of humour, a keen eye for the absurd, a fierce loyalty and a passionate zest for life. The letters cover 30 years of Diana's life.
ATKINSON, Kate Behind the Scenes at the Museum Moving with stark contrast between the Coronation year celebrations and life in the trenches during the First World War, this debut novel tells the story of a family observed by one of its members.
ATKINSON, Kate Life after Life What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale. What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?
ATKINSON, Kate One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a suspect.
ATWOOD, Margaret The Handmaid’s Tale The Republic of Gilead allows Offred only one function - to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on whom her future hangs.
ATWOOD, Margaret The Blind Assassin Even now, at the age of 82, Iris lives in the shadow cast by her younger sister Laura. Now poor and trying to cope with a failing body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death.
ATWOOD, Margaret Oryx and Crake With her shocking material and customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects readers into a less-than-brave new world, an outlandish yet wholly believable space populated by a cast of characters who will inhabit dreams.
ATWOOD, Margaret Moral Disorder This collection of stories from Margaret Atwood resembles a photograph album - a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life, and also of the other lives intertwined with it - those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies of teachers and even of animals.
AUDEN, W.H. Tell me the Truth about Love Collection of poems
AUSTEN, Jane Emma Emma Woodhouse is one of Austen's most captivating and vivid characters. Beautiful, spoilt, vain and irrepressibly witty, Emma organises the lives of the inhabitants of her sleepy little village and plays matchmaker with devastating effect.
AUSTEN, Jane Persuasion 'Persuasion' is the story of Anne Elliot, intelligent daughter of a spendthrift baronet, and her love for Frederick Wentworth. She is persuaded to refuse his proposition of marriage and spends seven unhappy years until he re-enters her life.
AUSTEN, Jane Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice is one of the best loved and most intimately known of Jane Austen's novels. Her sense of comedy and satire makes this an enduring classic of English literature.
AUSTEN, Jane Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen sets social snobbery against summer picnics; social rejection against the passion of real love. Her warm portrait of the relationship between two very different sisters contrasts her precise observation of vanity, selfishness and snobbery.
AUSTEN, Jane Lady Susan, The Watson and Sanditon Together, these three works - one novel unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments - reveal Jane Austen's development as a great artist.
BABAYAN, Karen Blood Oranges Dipped in Salt Blood Oranges Dipped in Salt, reflects the history of the Armenians of Iran from the perspective of the author's own family. Dreams feature strongly; also births, marriages and deaths, the stuff of family life. The stories bear witness to a minority cultural with a monumental history that has experienced generations of loss, displacement, migration, immigration and assimilation.
BACKMAN, Fredrik A Man called Ove There is something about Ove. At first sight, he is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets. But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed?
BAILEY, Catherine* Black Diamonds Situated in Yorkshire, surrounded by 70 collieries employing tens of thousands of men, is Wentworth, the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain. This volume tells the story of its demise. It is the story of how the fabric of English society shifted beyond recognition in 50 turbulent years in the 20th century.
BAINBRIDGE, Beryl According to Queeney In the 1770s and 1780s Dr Johnson, having completed his life's work, is running an increasingly chaotic life. Torn between his strict morality and his undeclared passion for the widow of an old friend, he is revealed here in all his wit and glory.
BAINBRIDGE, Beryl Every Man for Himself This book recaptures the four lost days of the Titanic's maiden voyage to New York. The story is told by Morgan, the nephew of the owner of the shipping line. Bainbridge's spare, laconic style of writing has never been used to better advantage.
BAKER, Jo The Telling Rachel travels to her mother's isolated country house in order to put her mother's affairs in order. However, along with the memories of her mother, Rachel feels something else, a presence. She grows ever more convinced that the house holds a message for her. Can the ghosts of the past be nudging their way into the present?
BAKER, Jo Longbourn It is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House, and Sarah's hands are chapped and bleeding. Domestic life below stairs, ruled tenderly and forcefully by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed by the arrival of a new footman smelling of the sea, and bearing secrets. For in Georgian England, there is a world the young ladies in the drawing room will never know, a world of poverty, love, and brutal war.
BAKER, Jo The Picture Book This is a family portrait captured in snapshots. First there is William, the factory lad who loses his life in Gallipoli, then his son Billy, a bicycle champion followed by his crippled son Will who becomes an Oxford academic and finally Will's daughter Billie, an artist in contemporary London.
BALLANTYNE, Lisa The Guilty One A little boy is found dead in a children's playground. Daniel Hunter has spent years defending lost causes. But his life changes when he is introduced to Sebastian, an 11-year-old accused of murder. As he plunges into the muddy depths of Sebastian's troubled life, Daniel thinks back to his own childhood in foster care.
BALSARI, Saumya The Cambridge Curry Club The action of 'The Cambridge Curry Club' unfolds over just nine hours in a single day, during which the four women - three Indian and one Irish - working in Cambridge's 'IndiaNeed' charity shop - battle to cope with the day's unpredictable events, as well as their overbearing employer.
BARBERY, Muriel The Elegance of the Hedgehog Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. But beneath this facade lies the real Renee: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives.
BARKER, Pat Toby’s Room Toby and Elinor, brother and sister, friends and confidants, are sharers of a dark secret, carried from the summer of 1912 into the battlefields of France and wartime London in 1917.
BARKER, Pat Regeneration Trilogy The three volumes in this collection - Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road - make up a fictional evocation of the First World War.
BARNES, Julian Sense of an Ending Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. They all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is in middle age and he is finding that memory is imperfect.
BARNETT, Laura The Versions of Us A man is walking down a country lane. A woman, cycling towards him, swerves to avoid a dog. On that moment, their future hinges. There are three possible outcomes, three small decisions that could determine the rest of their life. Eva and Jim are 19 and students at Cambridge when their paths first cross in 1958.
BAYLEY, Robin The Mango Orchard As a child, Robin Bayley was enchanted by his grandmother's stories of Mexican adventures. But Robin sensed there was more to these stories than anyone knew, and so he set out to follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather. This book is the story of parallel journeys' a hundred years apart, into the heart of Latin America.
BAUBY, Jean Dominique* The diving bell and the butterfly At the age of 42, Bauby suffered a massive stroke. Paralysed from head to toe, he was left imprisoned inside his body, his mind intact, but unable to speak or move anything except his left eyelid. This is his story.
BBC Radio 4 Poetry Please This collection includes ballads, satires, songs and prayers for every mood and taste. All of the poems were chosen by listeners of Poetry Please!
BENDER, Aimee The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake When 9-year-old Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's home-made lemon chocolate cake, to her horror, she discovers she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice. And her mother - her cheerful, can-do mother – tastes of despair and depression. Suddenly food becomes perilous.
BENNETT, Alan Three Stories This is a collection of Alan Bennett's novellas. It includes 'Father! Father! Burning Bright', 'The Clothes They Stood Up In' and 'The Laying on of Hands'. Alan Bennett received the British Book Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.
BENNETT,Alan Four Stories The classic account of the lady who lived on Bennett's drive joins his three bestselling novellas in a paperback compendium.
BENNETT, Alan Untold Stories 'Untold Stories' is a collection of Alan Bennett's prose. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Also included are essays, reviews, lectures and reminiscences.
BETJEMAN, John Trains and Buttered Toast: Selected Radio Talks Eccentric, sentimental & homespun, John Betjeman's passions were mostly self-taught. He saw his country being devastated by war & progress & he waged a private war to save it. His only weapons were words - the poetry for which he is best known &, even more influential the radio talks that first made him a phenomenon.
BIRCH. Carol Jamrach’s Menagerie Jaffy Brown is running through the London backstreets when he comes face to face with an escaped circus animal. His life is transformed by the encounter. Plucked from the jaws of death by Mr Jamrach, the two strike up a friendship. Before he knows it, Jaffy finds himself on board a ship bound for the South Seas.
BLAKE, Susan The Postmistress It is 1940, and bombs fall nightly on London. In the thick of the chaos is young American radio reporter Frankie Bard. She huddles close to terrified strangers in underground shelters, and later broadcasts stories about survivors in rubble-strewn streets. But for her listeners, the war is far from home.
BLOCK, Stefan Storm at the Door Spanning generations and genres, 'The Storm at the Door' blends memory and imagination, historical fact and compulsive storytelling, to offer a meditation on how our love for one another and the stories we tell ourselves allow us to endure.
BOYNE, John The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas A story of innocence existing within the most terrible evil, this is the fictional tale of two young boys caught up in events beyond their control.
BOYNE, John The House of Special Purpose Russia 1915. Aged 16, Georgy Jachmenev steps in front of an assassin's bullet intended for a senior member of the Russian Imperial family. He is proclaimed a hero and soon becomes bodyguard to Tsar Nicholas II's son. 65 years later, visiting his dying wife in hospital, memories of the life they had together flood his mind.
BRADBURY, Ray Fahrenheit 451 This hauntingly prophetic novel centres around a not-too-distant future where happiness is allocated on a TV screen, individuals and scholars are outcasts and books are burned by a special task force of firemen.
BRAGG, Melvyn The Maid of Buttermere The story of an imposter and bigamist, who travels to the North where he marries "the maid of Buttermere", a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of early 19th century writers.
BRAGG, Melvyn The Soldier’s Return When Sam Richardson returns from WW2 to Wigton in Cumbria, he finds little has changed, as far as his own limited prospects go. In his absence, though, his young family has changed immensely, and Sam struggles to adjust to life in peacetime.
BRAGG, Melvyn Remember Me A passionate but ultimately tragic love affair starts when two students - one French, one English - meet at university at the beginning of the 60s. From its tentative, unpromising early stages, the relationship develops into a life-changing one, whose profound impact continues to reverberate 40 years later.
BRAGG, Melvyn Son of War A Son of War portrays a family forever altered by an experience subsequent generations can scarcely imagine, yet whose individual hopes, compromises and quiet triumphs form the fabric of everyday life. This is the sequel to The Soldiers Return
BRAGG, Melvyn Grace and Mary John visits his ageing mother Mary in her nursing home by the sea, and mourns the slow fading of her mind. Hoping to shore up her memory, he prompts her with songs, photographs and questions about the 1940s, when she was a young woman and he a child in a small Cumbrian town. But he finds that most of all it is her own mother she longs for - Grace, the mother she barely knew.
BRAINE, John Room at the Top The ruthlessly ambitious Joe Lampton rises swiftly from the petty bureaucracy of local government into the unfamiliar world of inherited wealth, fast cars and glamorous women. But the price of success is high.
BRICE, Susan Returning Back Returning Back is a book full of short stories for adults, which covers subjects from the sublime to the ridiculous.How do you decide to get help when reality goes on the blink? What will the world be like after WWIII? Is your wardrobe watching you? What if you really, really want to give it all away? What was Picasso thinking when he painted 'Life'? Susan Brice looks at the world from the other end of the telescope.
BRITTAIN, Vera Testament of Youth This title tells one woman's unforgettable record of the First World War, 'Testament of Youth' is in spirit and impact as powerful a classic as 'All Quiet on the Western Front' and 'Goodbye to All That' - a haunting elegy for a lost generation.
BROADBENT, Sabrina You Don’t Have to be Good A novel about a childless, apparently invisible middle-aged woman who disappears from her life, creating unexpected ripples in the world around her.
BRONTE, Anne Agnes Grey When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess to contribute to their meagre income. But Agnes's enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the children and then with the family.
BRONTE, Anne The Tenant of Wildfell Hall This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen 'Graham' has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter.
BRONTE, Charlotte Jane Eyre A troubled childhood strengthens Jane Eyre's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she becomes governess at Thornfield Hall. When she finds love with Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice.
BRONTE, Emily Wuthering Heights At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.
BROWN, Kate The Beauty Chorus Billeted together in a tiny cottage in a sleepy country village, three ATA girls, Evie, Stella and Megan, must learn to live and work together. Brave, beautiful and fiercely independent, these women soon move beyond their different backgrounds as they find romance, confront loss, and forge friendships.
BRYSON, Bill At Home Where 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' was a sweeping survey of Earth, the universe and everything, 'At Home' is an inwards look at all human life through a domestic telescope. Because, as Bryson says, our homes aren't refuges from history. They are where history begins and ends.
BRYSON, Bill Notes from a Small Island In Notes From a Small Island, Bryson, who moved to England from the USA seventeen years ago and settled in North Yorkshire with his family, turns an affectionate but ironic eye on his adopted country. Britain will never seem the same again.
BUCHAN, Elizabeth Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman Rose Lloyd was the last to suspect her husband of an affair, especially one with her friend Minty. Left alone, Rose starts thinking about the man she married, about how well she knew him, and about the girl she had been before she met him.
BUCHAN, John The Thirty-Nine Steps Richard Hannay's ennui comes to an abrupt end when a murder is committed in his flat. Only a few days before the dead man had revealed to him an assassination plot which would have terrible consequences for international peace.
BYATT, A. S Unruly Times A.S. Byatt examines the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, against the background of the great changes of their times - in society, politics, education and literature.
BYATT, A. S. The Children’s Book A panoramic novel of family secrets, set against a backdrop of a bohemian, artistic late Victorian and Edwardian world, and with real commercial as well as literary potential, about the damage wrought by writers of children's books on their children - about predators and innocents, war and peace, art and society.
CAIN, Philip Picnic in Iraq A close-knit group of friends find an Iraqi map. They are joined by a glamorous war correspondent and travel the length of Iraq, following the original Knights Templar route; in search of a treasure of unimaginable wealth. Encounters with the American security forces, Iraqi bandits and Islamic State, do not deter them from their quest.
CAMPBELL, Jen The Bookshop Book From the oldest bookshop in the world, to the smallest you could imagine, 'The Bookshop Book' examines the history of books, talks to authors about their favourite places, and looks at over 200 weirdly wonderful bookshops across six continents (sadly, we've yet to build a bookshop down in the South Pole).
CAREY, Peter Parrot and Olivier in America Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatized child of survivors of the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant printer who always wanted to be an artist, but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be brought together by their travels in America.
CAREY, Peter Oscar and Lucinda Oscar and Lucinda is a moving love story and a historical tour de force that is also powerfully contemporary.
CARNARVON, Fiona Lady Catherine and the real Downton Abbey 'Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey' tells the story of the beautiful American heiress who lived at Highclere Castle, the setting for Julian Fellowes' award winning drama Downton Abbey. Glamorous and wealthy, Catherine became the toast of London society when she travelled across the Atlantic in 1920 to marry the Earl of Porchester, or 'Porchy', as he was known. At just 19 Catherine had to learn how to organise and host the lavish banquets and weekend house parties that Porchy so loved.
CARR, J.L A Month in the Country In the summer of 1920, a young man escapes London to embark on the unveiling of a medieval church wall painting in a small north country village. As he becomes absorbed by his work so too does he get drawn into the lives of those around him.
CARTWRIGHT, Justin To Heaven by Water Now that his wife is dead, retired television news anchor David Cross believes that he is more himself than he has been for 40 years. When Nancy was alive, he had secrets that he kept from her. Now he has a secret that he must keep from his children, namely that he is in some ways happier now than he was when their mother was alive.
CARVER, Raymond What we Talk about When we Talk About Love In these stories, some only three or four pages long, plots are set in motion with astonishing speed, narration is colloquial and laconic, dialogue reveals an ear for the way people speak, and every story packs a devastating emotional charge.
CATTON, Eleanor The Luminaries It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery.
CHEEK, Mavis Amenable Women This novel about two intelligent, accomplished women who lived in the shadow of the men they married, interweaves a fascinating and little-known part of history with a funny, charming contemporary tale.
CHEEK, Mavis Mrs Fytton’s Country Life Angela Fytton, wonderwife, supermother, bedroom vamp and business partner, has been dumped by her husband for a younger model. Now divorced, she decides to fight and moves to the country, thinking country folks are almost angels.
CHEEK, Mavis Sleeping Beauties This novel, set in a 1980s beauty parlour, follows Chloe as she sets out to prove to Tabitha that she can give her clients the makeover of a lifetime, and the resulting quest for feminine perfection achieves hilarious consequences.
CHEEVER, John Collected Stories The complete collection of award-winning stories from one of the finest American writers of the last century.
CHESLER, Phyllis An American Bride in Kabul This title tells the extraordinary story of a young woman's ordeal in a harem in Afghanistan and how her escape inspired her fight for human rights. The dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for worldwide social, educational, and political reform.
CHEVALIER, Tracy Falling Angels Using a number of shifting perspectives - wives and husbands, friends and lovers, masters and servants, and a gravedigger's son - this novel follows the fortunes of two families in the first years of the 20th century.
CHEVALIER, Tracy The Lady and the Unicorn Set over the period 1490 to 1492, the novel moves between a chateau in Lyons and the cities of Paris and Brussels. The story concerns a series of six Flemish tapestries known as The lady and the Unicorn tapestries.
CLANCY, Kate Antigona and Me "One morning, a privileged North London writer, Kate Clanchy, chances upon a Kosovan refugee called Antigona. The former offers the latter a job as a cleaner on impulse. So begins a moving friendship that results in this journal of Antigona's escape from her wartorn homeland, domestic torture and alien status in Britain. '' --Independent
CLARK, Clare The Great Stink Through the city sewers walks surveyor and ex-soldier William May, just back from the horrifying brutality of the Crimean front and hiding from his own demons. But when May stumbles across a body in the tunnels, his discovery draws him into a maelstrom of underworld corruption.
CLEAVE, Chris The Other Hand Deeply moving, yet light in touch, the novel explores the nature of loss, hope, love and identity with atrocity as its backdrop.
CLEEVES, Ann Raven Black The murder of teenager Catherine Ross sends shockwaves through a small Shetland community, and most of the fingers of blame point to loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But Catherine's vicious and sudden demise has thrown a veil of suspicion over everyone who knew her, and one local detective is keeping all options open.
CLEMENTS, Rory Martyr England is close to war. Within days the axe could fall on the neck of Mary Queen of Scots, & Spain is already gathering a battle fleet to avenge her. Tensions in Elizabeth I's government are at breaking point. At the eye of the storm is John Shakespeare, chief intelligencer in the secret service of Sir Francis Walsingham.
COETZEE, JM Disgrace A divorced, middle-aged English professor finds himself unable to resist affairs with his female students. When discovered by the college authorities he refuses to become a scapegoat and leaves his job and the city to live on a remote farm.
COLLINS, Wilkie The Woman in White The classic Victorian Gothic novel.. When Walter Hartright has a mysterious moonlit encounter with a woman dressed all in white, his world changes forever.
CONEFREY, Mick Everest 1953 Mick Conefrey tells the real story of Everest 1953, revealing that what has gone down in history as a supremely well-planned attempt was in fact beset by crises - both on and off the mountain. To succeed, team leader Colonel John Hunt and his team had to draw on unimaginable skill and determination, as well as sheer British ingenuity.
CONNELL, DJ Sherry Cracker gets Normal Meet Sherry Cracker: loner, obsessive note-taker and lover of tartan trousers. She works for Mr Chin, a penny-pinching, straight-talking man who runs a business collecting unwanted gold from dentists. One Friday afternoon, Mr Chin uncharacteristically gives her 100 and a weekend in which to transform her life.
CONNELLY, Charlie Attention all Shipping Familiar though the sea areas are by name, few people give much thought to where they are or what they contain. Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice on the radio, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography.
COOK, Rachel Her Brilliant Career In 1956, a widow, Violet Clark, was accused of the murder of her baby twins. At her trial, Wright's defence saved her from the gallows.But Viole was defended by Rose Heilbron QC, the first woman to be appointed silk in Britain, the first woman to defend in a murder trial - and a tabloid celebrity. Rachel Cooke tells the story of Heilbron and some of her extraordinary contemporaries.
COPE, Wendy Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis Wendy Cope's first full length collection of poems.
COURCY, Anna de 1939 The Last Season A portrait of British upper-class life during the social season of 1939, the last before World War II. As the hot summer drew on, the newspapers filled with ever more ominous reports of the relentless progress towards war. There was nothing to do but wait and dance. The last season of peace was nearly over.
CREWDSON, Dorothea Dorothea’s War In April 1915, Dorothea Crewdson, a newly trained Red Cross nurse and her friend Christie, receive instructions to leave for Le Treport in northern France. Filled with excitement at the prospect of her first paid job, she began writing a diary. She went on to witness and record some of the worst tragedies of the First World War.
CROFT, Edna Maryport When asked what life was like before washing machines and television, Edna decided to write it down.This became a picture of a small life in a Maryport that was emerging, struggling, from the Second World War into times of optimism, progress and seeming stability. It is not so much a love story as a story of love; the love within one family and a love of Maryport.