| Author: | Patrick Ness |
One night, George Duncan - decent man, a good man - is woken by a noise in his garden. Impossibly, a great white crane has tumbled to earth, shot through its wing by an arrow. Unexpectedly moved, George helps the bird, and from the moment he watches it fly off, his life is transformed. The next day, a kind but enigmatic woman... read more
| Author: | Melvyn Bragg |
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 ... read more
| Author: | Amos Oz |
'On the kibbutz it's hard to know. We're all supposed to be friends but very few really are.' Amos Oz's compelling new fiction offers revelatory glimpses into the secrets and frustrations of the human heart, played out by a community of misfits united by political disagreement, intense dissatisfaction and lifetimes of words l... read more
| Author: | Barbara Kingsolver |
Discontented with her life of poverty on a failing farm in the Eastern United States, Dellarobia, a young mother, impulsively seeks out an affair. Instead, on the Appalachian mountains above her home, she discovers something much more profoundly life-changing - a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature.
As the worl... read more
| Author: | Jane Gardam |
| Series: | Old Filth #3 |
Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat told with bristling tenderness and black humour the stories of that Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, and his clever, misunderstood wife Betty. Last Friends, the final volume of this trilogy, picks up with Terence Veneering, Filth's great rival in work and - though it was... read more
| Author: | John le Carre |
A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend. So delicate is the operation that... read more
| Author: | Claire Messud |
I'm halfway through my life, or maybe more, and I'm finally awake to the fact that it's in my hands alone. I've believed in other people, had faith, been patient, waiting for my moment -- enough, already. Who have I been kidding? Nora Eldridge has always been a good girl: a good daughter, colleague, friend, employee.
Sh... read more
| Author: | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Series: | Popular Penguins |
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby brilliantly captures the disillusion of a society obsessed with wealth and status. Young, handsome and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby appears to have it all, yet he yearns for the one thing that will always be out of his reach, the absence of which renders his life of glittering parties and... read more
| Author: | E. L. James |
"Fifty Shades of Grey". When literature student Anastasia Steele interviews successful entrepreneur Christian Grey, she finds him very attractive and deeply intimidating. Unworldly and innocent, Ana is shocked to find she wants this man, and excited when she realises that Christian wants her too. As they embark on a passionat... read more
| Author: | Edward Rutherfurd |
City of love. City of splendour. City of terror. City of dreams.
Inspired by the haunting, passionate story of the city of lights, this epic novel weaves a gripping tale of four families across the centuries: From the lies that spawn the noble line of de Cygne to the revolutionary Le Sourds who seek their destruction; f... read more
| Author: | Ayana Mathis |
For fans of Toni Morrison, an unforgettably powerful novel about a mother's courage, sacrifice and love, set against the volatile history of twentieth century America.
When Hattie clambered from a train, her skirt still hemmed with Georgia mud and the dream of Philadelphia sitting round as a marble in her mouth, she cou... read more
| Author: | Dan Rhodes |
This title is essential reading for anyone who is, has ever been, or might one day be married.
| Author: | Hilary Mantel |
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the 2012 Costa Book of the Year. With this historic win for 'Bring Up the Bodies', Hilary Mantel becomes the first British author and the first woman to be awarded two Man Booker Prizes (her first was for 'Wolf Hall' in 2009). By 1535 Thomas Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his... read more
| Author: | Taiye Selasi |
This is the story of a family -- of the simple, devastating ways in which families tear themselves apart, and of the incredible lengths to which a family will go to put itself back together. It is the story of one family, the Sais, whose good life crumbles in an evening; a Ghanaian father, Kwaku Sai, who becomes a highly res... read more
| Author: | Scott F. Fitzgerald |
Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky business interests and a shadowy past. As the two men strike up an unlikely fr... read more
| Author: | Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche |
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a powerful new novel-her first in seven years: a story of love and race centred around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home. As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall i... read more
| Author: | Vikas Swarup |
Life pivots on a few key moments. This is one of them. Sapna Sinha works in an electronics store in downtown Delhi. She hates her job, but she is ambitious and determined to succeed, and she knows without the money she brings in, her family won't be able to survive. Little does she know it but her life is about to change fore... read more
| Author: | Aminatta Forna |
A powerful novel about the indelible effects of war and the memories which stir beneath the silence of a quiet Croatian town, from Orange Prize-shortlisted and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna.
Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The Croatian winter ... read more
| Author: | Rebecca Miller |
In eighteenth-century Paris, Jacob is a peddler of knives, salt cellars and snuffboxes. Despite a disastrous teenage marriage, Jacob is determined to raise himself up in life, by whatever means he can. In twenty-first-century America, Jacob's life has twisted in ways he could never have imagined. But even the tiniest of flies... read more
| Author: | Claire Messud |
I'm halfway through my life, or maybe more, and I'm finally awake to the fact that it's in my hands alone. I've believed in other people, had faith, been patient, waiting for my moment -- enough, already. Who have I been kidding? Nora Eldridge has always been a good girl: a good daughter, colleague, friend, employee.
Sh... read more
| Author: | Edward Rutherfurd |
City of love. City of splendour. City of terror. City of dreams.
Inspired by the haunting, passionate story of the city of lights, this epic novel weaves a gripping tale of four families across the centuries: From the lies that spawn the noble line of de Cygne to the revolutionary Le Sourds who seek their destruction; f... read more
| Author: | Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche |
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a powerful new novel-her first in seven years: a story of love and race centred around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home. As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall i... read more