Worn out by poverty, Lettie Radley and her miner husband Tommy grasp at the offer of their very own smallholding - part of a Government scheme to put the unemployed back to work on the land. When she comes down to Essex to join him, it's not Tommy who greets her, but their new neighbours. Overbearing and unkempt, Jean and Adam Dell are everything that the smart, spirited, aspirational Lettie can't abide.
As Lettie settles in, she finds an unexpected joy in the rhythms of life on the smallholding. She's hopeful that her past, and the terrible secret Tommy has come to Foxash to escape, are far behind them. But the Dells have their own secrets. And as the seasons change, and a man comes knocking at the gate, the scene is set for a terrible reckoning.
Combining a gothic sensibility with a visceral, unsettling sense of place, Foxash is a deeply original novel of quiet and powerful menace, of the real hardships of rural life, and the myths and folklore that seep into ordinary lives - with surprising consequences.
Worn out by poverty, Lettie Radley and her miner husband Tommy grasp at the offer of their very own smallholding - part of a Government scheme to put the unemployed back to work…
As the rest of the world lies sleeping, Eleanor straps her infant daughter, Amy, into the back of her car. This is the moment she knew must come, when they will walk out on her husband Leon and a marriage in ruins since his return from Vietnam. Together, she and Amy will journey to blue mountain, a place of enchantment and refuge that lit up Eleanor’s childhood.
As the car eats up the miles, so Eleanor’s mind dives back into her fractured relationship with her mother, Kitty. Kitty who asked for so much from life, from love, from family. Kitty who had battled so hard to prise her husband George out of the grip of war. Kitty, whose disapproving voice rings so loud in Eleanor’s head.
Tense, visceral, glittering, it is a masterful return to fiction from the author of the acclaimed See What I Have Done.
As the rest of the world lies sleeping, Eleanor straps her infant daughter, Amy, into the back of her car. This is the moment she knew must come, when they will walk out on her…
From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a deliciously funny, poignant and wry novel, full of surprising twists and turns:
James is getting on a bit and needs full-time help. So Phoebe and Robert, his middle-aged offspring, employ Mandy, who seems willing to take him off their hands. But as James regales his family with tales of Mandy's virtues, their shopping trips and the shared pleasure of their journeys to garden centres, Phoebe and Robert sense something is amiss.
Then something extraordinary happens which throws everything into new relief, changing all the stories of their childhood - and the father - that they thought they knew so well.
From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a deliciously funny, poignant and wry novel, full of surprising twists and turns:
James is getting on a bit and…
From swimming on Hampstead Heath to house-sitting with troublesome dogs, or illicit afternoon trysts in Soho to pedicures in Florence with recalcitrant teenagers,. this collection of short stories includes some previously unpublished in book form, and covers the gamut of human nature - our foibles, our loves, our desires, hopes, ambitions and failures.
Rich in observation and speckled with a delicious dark humour, Fool for Love: The Selected Short stories confirms Deborah Moggach's place as one of our finest observers of human life.
From swimming on Hampstead Heath to house-sitting with troublesome dogs, or illicit afternoon trysts in Soho to pedicures in Florence with recalcitrant teenagers,. this collection…
Did you ever have a friend who made you see the world differently?
Stan did, and his name was Charlie. They crossed paths by chance one day, cycling on Goshawk Common. Fearless, clever, older, Charlie was everything Stan - bullied and adrift after his father's death - wanted to be. Charlie taught Stan to ask questions, to stand on his own two feet. But could their friendship endure in a world that offered these two boys such different prospects?
When the two meet again, as adults, the tables have turned, and while Stan is revelling in all the city has to offer, Charlie is the one struggling. But will Stan be there for the man who once showed him the meaning of loyalty?
Did you ever have a friend who made you see the world differently?
Stan did, and his name was Charlie. They crossed paths by chance one day, cycling on Goshawk Common. Fearless,…
A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska.
Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead 'at the world's edge' in the raw Alaskan wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost many years before.
The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes. In a moment of tenderness, the pair are surprised to find themselves building a snowman - or rather a snow girl - together. The next morning, all trace of her has disappeared, and Jack can't quite shake the notion that he glimpsed a small figure - a child - running through the spruce trees in the dawn light. And how to explain the little but very human tracks Mabel finds at the edge of their property?
Written with the clarity and vividness of the Russian fairytale from which it takes its inspiration, The Snow Child is an instant classic - the story of a couple who take a child into their hearts, all the while knowing they can never truly call her their own.
A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska.
Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead 'at the world's edge' in…
Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the folk and fairy tales of the people and communities around her. It is 1857 and the Highland Clearances have left devastation and poverty, and a community riven by fear. The crofters are suspicious and hostile to a stranger, claiming they no longer know their fireside stories.
Then Audrey discovers the body of a young girl washed up on the beach and the crofters reveal that it is only a matter of weeks since another girl disappeared. They believe the girls are the victims of the restless dead: spirits who take the form of birds.
Initially, Audrey is sure the girls are being abducted, but as events accumulate she begins to wonder if something else is at work. Something which may be linked to the death of her own mother, many years before.
Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the folk and fairy tales of the people and communities around her. It is 1857 and the Highland Clearances have left devastation and…
After the birth of her daughter Emma, the usually resilient Majella finds herself feeling isolated and exhausted. Then, at her childhood home, Majella discovers the diary of her maternal ancestor Ginny, and is shocked to read a story of murder in her family history.
With the famine upon her, Ginny Doyle fled from Ireland to America, but not all of her family made it. What happened during those harrowing years, and why does Ginny call herself a killer? Is Majella genetically fated to be a bad mother, despite the fierce tenderness she feels for her baby?
Determined to uncover the truth of her heritage and her own identity, Majella sets out to explore Ginny's past - and discovers surprising truths about her family and ultimately, herself.
After the birth of her daughter Emma, the usually resilient Majella finds herself feeling isolated and exhausted. Then, at her childhood home, Majella discovers the diary of her…
A secret shared. Two lives entwined. Finally the past must come to light.
An unforgettable story of two women linked by their roles in a tragedy at the end of the Victorian era.
When Anna, the young woman she cared for as a child, announces her intention to visit the elderly Maddie, Maddie recognises her last chance to unburden herself of a story that has gnawed at her for sixty years. For Maddie, rather like the butterfly cabinet she keeps safely under lock and key, has for too long guarded a secret: that of the day a four-year-old girl died at the big house where she worked as a nanny.
Finally, Maddie knows, Anna is ready to hear what happened. As Maddie's mind drifts back through the years, so too is revealed the story of Charlotte's mother, Harriet Ormond. A proud, uncompromising woman, Harriet's great passion is collecting butterflies and pinning them under glass; motherhood comes no easier to her than her role as mistress of her remote Irish estate. When her daughter dies, her community is quick to judge her, and Harriet will not stoop to defend herself. But her journals reveal a more complex truth.
A secret shared. Two lives entwined. Finally the past must come to light.
An unforgettable story of two women linked by their roles in a tragedy at the end of the Victorian era.…
It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce - back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.
It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going…
Mallory sees the woman for the first time at her college gym and is immediately transfixed. As a naturally reserved person who is now reeling from the loss of her mother, Mallory finds herself compelled by the woman's assurance, and longs to know her better. Despite the discovery that she is a professor at the college, Mallory finds herself falling into a complicated love affair with the woman, the stakes of which she never quite understands.
In the years that follow, Mallory must come to terms with how the relationship shaped her, for better or worse, and learn to become a part of the world that she sacrificed for the sake of a woman she never truly knew.
In this enthralling debut novel, the complexities of influence, obsession, and admiration reveal how desire and its consequences can alter the trajectory of a life.
Mallory sees the woman for the first time at her college gym and is immediately transfixed. As a naturally reserved person who is now reeling from the loss of her mother, Mallory…
In Baxter's Beach, Barbados, Lala's grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister, a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers.
For Wilma, it's the story of a wilful adventurer, who ignores the warnings of those around her, and suffers as a result.
When Lala grows up, she sees it offers hope - of life after losing a baby in the most terrible of circumstances and marrying the wrong man.
And Mira Whalen? It's about keeping alive, trying to make sense of the fact that her husband has been murdered, and she didn't get the chance to tell him that she loved him after all.
In Baxter's Beach, Barbados, Lala's grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister, a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers.
For Wilma,…
Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is Dolly - her clever, headstrong daughter, now on the cusp of leaving home.
Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door, disarm Sunday with their charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday's book. Soon they are in and out of each others' homes, and Sunday feels loved and accepted like never before. But beneath Vita and Rollo's polish lies something else, something darker. For Sunday has precisely what Vita has always wanted for herself: a daughter of her own.
Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only…
Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de' Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of marriage to Alfonso d'Este, ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf.
Having barely left girlhood, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate her appears before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?
As Lucrezia sits in uncomfortable finery for the painting which is to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferrarese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, her future hangs entirely in the balance.
Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de' Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings.…
Celebrated, bestselling, elusive...who is Maud Dixon?
Florence Darrow wants to be a writer. Correction: Florence Darrow IS going to be a writer. Fired from her first job in publishing, she jumps at the chance to be assistant to the celebrated Maud Dixon, the anonymous bestselling novelist. The arrangement comes with conditions - high secrecy, living in an isolated house in the countryside . Before long, the two of them are on a research trip to Morocco, to inspire the much-promised second novel. Beach walks, red sunsets and long, whisky-filled evening discussions...win-win, surely? Until Florence wakes up in a hospital, having narrowly survived a car crash.
How did it happen - and where is Maud Dixon, who was in the car with her? Florence feels she may have been played, but wait, if Maud is no longer around, maybe Florence can make her mark as a writer after all...
Celebrated, bestselling, elusive...who is Maud Dixon?
Florence Darrow wants to be a writer. Correction: Florence Darrow IS going to be a writer. Fired from her first job in…
Naomi Ishiguro's fresh, magical and delightfully speculative short story collection merges the inventiveness of David Mitchell and the fairy-tale allure of Angela Carter to form its own powerful magic.
Witness what happens when a space-obsessed child conjures up a vortex in his mother's airing cupboard in Shearing Season. Watch unexpected possibilities open up in The Flat Roof when a musician makes friends with a flock of birds.
Get lost in the world of The Rat Catcher where, finding himself potentially out of his depth when he is summoned to a decaying royal palace, a rat catcher is plunged into a battle for the throne of a ruined kingdom.
In this stunning debut collection, the characters yearn for freedom and flight, and find their worlds transformed beyond their wildest imaginings.
Naomi Ishiguro's fresh, magical and delightfully speculative short story collection merges the inventiveness of David Mitchell and the fairy-tale allure of Angela Carter to…
Pru is on her own. But then, so are plenty of other people. And while the loneliness can be overwhelming, surely she'll find a party somewhere?
Pru's husband has walked out, leaving her alone to contemplate her future. She's missing not so much him, but the life they once had - nestling up like spoons in the cutlery drawer as they sleep. Now there's just a dip on one side of the bed and no-one to fill it.
In a daze, Pru goes off to a friend's funeral. Usual old hymns, words of praise and a eulogy but...it doesn't sound like the friend Pru knew. She's gone to the wrong service. Everyone was very welcoming, it was more excitement than she's had for ages. So she buys a little black dress in a charity shop and thinks, now I'm all set, why not go to another? I mean, people don't want to make a scene at a funeral, do they? No-one will challenge her - and what harm can it do?
Pru is on her own. But then, so are plenty of other people. And while the loneliness can be overwhelming, surely she'll find a party somewhere?
Pru's husband has walked out,…
A deeply personal novel of identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part satire, part picaresque, at its heart it is the story of a father and son, and the country they call home.
Ranging from the heartland towns of America to palatial suites in Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, Akhtar forges a narrative voice that is original as it is exuberantly entertaining. This is a world in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear and the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to wreak havoc. Homeland Elegies is a novel written in love and anger, which spares no one, least of all the author himself.
A deeply personal novel of identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and…
Landry and Prentiss are two brothers born into slavery, finally freed as the American Civil War draws to its bitter close. Cast into the world without a penny to their names, their only hope is to find work in a society that still views them with nothing but intolerance.
Farmer George Walker and his wife Isabelle are reeling from a loss that has shaken them to their core. After a chance encounter, they agree to employ the brothers on their land, and slowly the tentative bonds of trust begin to blossom between the strangers.
But this sanctuary survives on a knife’s edge, and it isn’t long before a tragedy causes the inhabitants of the nearby town to turn their suspicion onto these new friendships, with devastating consequences.
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Landry and Prentiss are two brothers born into slavery, finally freed as the American Civil War draws to its bitter close. Cast into the world without a penny to their names,…
Lydia Perez owns a bookshop in Acapulco, Mexico, and is married to a fearless journalist. Luca, their eight-year-old son, completes the picture.
But it only takes a bullet to rip them apart.
In a city in the grip of a drug cartel, friends become enemies overnight, and Lydia has no choice but to flee with Luca at her side. North for the border... whatever it takes to stay alive.
The journey is dangerous - not only for them, but for those they encounter along the way. Who can be trusted? And what sacrifices is Lydia prepared to make?
Lydia Perez owns a bookshop in Acapulco, Mexico, and is married to a fearless journalist. Luca, their eight-year-old son, completes the picture.
But it only takes a bullet to rip…
