Go backstage during the most dramatic period in English history: the reign of Henry VIII. England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses …
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Go backstage during the most dramatic period in English history: the reign of Henry VIII. England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses …
Late on a hot summer night in the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleep-out. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of …
Berlin, 1940. The city is paralysed by fear. But one man refuses to be scared. Otto, an ordinary German living in a shabby apartment block, tries to stay out of trouble under Nazi rule. But when he discovers his only son has been killed fighting …
The Secret River Kate Grenville
After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like …
A Question of Belief Donna Leon
As Venice experiences a debilitating heatwave, Commissario Brunetti prepares to escape the city and spend time with his family in the mountains. However, the weather is the last thing on Ispettore Vianellos mind; it seems his aunt has become …
Nick Hornby returns to his roots - music and messy relationships - in this funny and touching new novel which thoughtfully and sympathetically looks at how lives can be wasted but how they are never beyond redemption. Annie lives in a dull town …
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet David Mitchell
Imagine a nation banishing the outside world for two centuries, crushing all vestiges of Christianity, forbidding its subjects to leave its shores on pain of death, and harbouring a deep mistrust of European ideas. The narrow window onto this …
'It was our third time playing the Godfather theme since lunch...' In a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush …
An old man lies dying. Confined to bed in his living room, he sees the walls around him begin to collapse, the windows come loose from their sashes, and the ceiling plaster fall off in great chunks, showering him with a lifetime of debris: …
The Complete Cosmicomics Italo Calvino
The Cosmicomics tell the story of the history of the universe, from the big bang, through millennia and across galaxies. It is witnessed through the eyes of 'cosmic know-it-all' Qfwfq, an exuberant, chameleon-like figure, who takes the shape of a …
Imperial Bedrooms Bret Easton Ellis
Twenty-five years on from Less Than Zero, we pick up again with Clay. In 1985, Bret Easton Ellis shocked, stunned and disturbed with Less Than Zero, his 'extraordinarily accomplished first novel' (New Yorker), successfully chronicling the …
Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul -- the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and …
The Hand That First Held Mine Maggie OFarrell
gorgeously written story of love and motherhood, this is a tour de force from one of our most acclaimed and best loved novelists.When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot …
'I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had …
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End Leif Persson
It begins with the apparent suicide of a young American student in Stockholm. What is at first an open and shut case of suicide quickly leads to a complex web of international espionage, treachery and ultimately the legendary murder of the …
On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water. But each …
The stories in Julian Barnes' long-awaited third collection are attuned to rhythms and currents: of the body, of love and sex, illness and death, connections and conversations. Each character is bent to a pulse, propelled on by success and loss, …
'I had been mistaken for him so many times that when he died it was as if part of myself had died too.' Kevin Thunder grew up with a double - a boy so uncannily like him that they were mistaken for each other at every turn. As children in 1960s …
The Finkler Question Howard Jacobson
'He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one'. Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, …
At the close of a long day, Inspector Stephen Villani stands in the bathroom of a luxury apartment high above the city. In the glass bath, a young woman lies dead, a panic button within reach. So begins the sequel to Peter Temple's bestselling …
When Henk's twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'. After his old, worn-out …
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER FICTION 2011 A Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan's spellbinding novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the …
Last Man in Tower Aravind Adiga
This is the magnificent new novel from the million-selling Booker Prize-winner: one of the most eagerly anticipated literary novels of 2011. Every building tells a story: but in the jungle of Mumbai, one building - and one man - stands on the …
Caleb's Crossing Geraldine Brooks
In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. From the few facts that survive of this extraordinary life, Brooks creates a luminous tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure. The …
The Stranger's Child Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst's first novel since The Line of Beauty, winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize It is the late summer of the last year before the first Great War. Cecil Valance, a beautiful young aristocratic poet, is visiting Two Acres, the home …
There were people on the banks of the river. Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women for ever. Dr Annick Swenson's work is …
The Devotion of Suspect X Keigo Higashino
Yasuko lives a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop, a good mother to her only child. But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one day, her comfortable world is shattered. When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries …
IMPAC LITERARY WINNER 2011 Let The Great World Spin Colum McCann
It's New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; …
Vogel Winner 2011 The Roving Party Rohan Wilson
1829, Tasmania. John Batman, ruthless, singleminded; four convicts, the youngest still only a stripling; Gould, a downtrodden farmhand; two free black trackers; and powerful, educated Black Bill, brought up from childhood as a white man. This is …
At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy. The boy is not his own. It's a single act of violence, but the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it. Told through the eyes of eight of those present at …