London in the 18th century is a city as squalid and superstitious as it is elegant and enlightened, where a brilliant architect is commissioned to build several new churches. Two hundred and fifty years later in the sprawling metropolis of London the legacy of the past lives on, as CID Detective Hawksmoor investigates a series of murders that have occurred on the sites of 18th century churches.

Two thousand years in the future, Plato the orator summons the citizens of London on ritual occasions to impart the city's ancient history. Philosophy, technology, religion and art are all given the same witty and thought-provoking treatment. An inventive look back on the last century.

Beginning in a small village on the Chinese-Russian border in the final days of World War II, this audiobook tells the story of a mother and daughter separated by war. In a district of the city of Harbin, a haven for White Russian families since Russia's Communist revolution, Alina Kozlova must make a heartbreaking decision if her only child, Anya, is to live. The story sweeps across cultures and continents, from the glamorous nightclubs of Shanghai to the harshness of Cold War Soviet Russia in the 1960s, from a desolate island in the Pacific Ocean to a new life in post-war Australia. Both mother and daughter must make sacrifices, but is the price of survival too high? Most importantly of all, will they ever find each other again?

Simone Fleurier is wrenched from her home on a Provencal lavender farm at the age of fourteen after the accidental death of her father. Forced to become a maid at the boarding house of her Aunt Augustine in Marseilles, Simone's life is hard and impoverished. But one of her aunt's boarders, the beautiful Camille Casal - a star at the local music hall - gives Simone a dream ... that one day she too will be a famous singer and dancer. Years later, the famous Simone Fleurier, toast of Paris, watches Nazi troops occupy the city. Suddenly, her world is turned upside down, and Simone must make new and dangerous choices.

Nazneen's inauspicious entry into the world - an apparent stillbirth on the hard mud floor of a Bangladeshi village hut - imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents when she is married to Chanu. Her life in London's Tower Hamlet's is, on the surface, calm. But into that peace walks Karim. He sets questions before her of longing and belonging; he opens her eyes and directs her gaze - yet what she sees, in the end, comes as a surprise to them both.

Jim has fallen into a job at one of the new red brick universities. A moderately successful future beckons as long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend, deliver a lecture on merrie England and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Professor Welch's son, Bertrand.

When attractive young Jenny Bunn comes south to teach, she falls in with Patrick Standish, a schoolmaster, and all the rakes and rogues of a provincial Hell Fire Club.

The Green Man pub is haunted by the spirit of Dr Thomas Underhill, the 17th-century scholar rumoured to have killed his wife. The local sexton had refused to dig Underhill's grave and the rector had declined to officiate at his funeral. And there are skeletons in the cupboard of the publican's own domestic affairs - just rattling to get out.

As daughter of the blacksmith in her tiny Irish village, fifteen-year-old Kitty Doyle knows little of the ways of the world, but she has to grow up fast when her widowed father re-marries and she has no choice but to leave the family home. Luckily, there's work to be found over the water in 1920s Liverpool and soon Kitty has a job in a grocer's job, where she also catches the eye of the owner. With Kitty's input the business is soon thriving - but tragedy lies ahead, and she must endure many trials and tribulations before she can find true happiness.

The first novel in the Dollanganger series. Four children lived a perfect family life with loving parents - until the death of their father. The children are hidden away in an attic at their cruel grandmother's house by their fragile mother, reassured that it would only be until she had inherited her family's fortune. But gradually she forgot how much she loved her children...

The sequel to 'Flowers in the Attic'. The children have escaped from their confinement in the attic, and try desperately to lead a normal life as they grow into adulthood. However their past continues to haunt them. The second novel in the Dollanganger series.

The Dollanganger family are now living as far as possible from the traumatic scenes of their childhoods, and have finally found happiness in their new lives. However the dark legacy from their past, and thoughts of revenge begin to haunt them once more. The third novel in the Dollanganger series.

Cathy and Chris return at last to Foxworth Hall, where they were hidden long ago. Despite every endeavour, they find that they are prisoners of a past they cannot escape. The fourth novel in the Dollanganger series.

A disgraced British colonel bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son, Adam Scott, setting into motion a deadly chain of events that threatens to shake the very foundations of the free world. Within days, Adam's lover is brutally murdered and he's running for his life through the great cities of Europe, pursued not only by the KGB, but by the CIA and his own countrymen as well. Their common intent is to kill him before the truth comes out. When at last he comes to understand what he is in possession of, he's even more determined to protect it.

Spanning seven turbulent decades, this audiobook traces the fabulous rise of poor but ambitious Charlie Trumper, a man who becomes embroiled in one family's battle to build London's greatest department store against overwhelming odds whilst undermining their enemies.

In the 1960s four new MPs take their seats at Westminster. Over three decades they share the passions of the race for power with their wives and families, men and women caught up in a game for the highest stakes of all. But only one man can gain the ultimate goal - the office of Prime Minister.

On April 15, 1906, two baby boys entered the world on different sides of the globe. One was born to a life of prosperity and ease, the other to a world of hardship and struggle. William Lowell Kane, scion of a Boston banking family is the ultimate adversary of Abel Rosnovski, penniless Polish immigrant - one is gold, the other steel. Across three generations and around a rapidly changing world, their war rages unchecked, for the love of a dream, the loss of an empire, and the lure of a fortune.

On April 15, 1906, two baby boys entered the world on different sides of the globe. One was born to a life of prosperity and ease, the other to a world of hardship and struggle. William Lowell Kane, scion of a Boston banking family is the ultimate adversary of Abel Rosnovski, penniless Polish immigrant - one is gold, the other steel. Across three generations and around a rapidly changing world, their war rages unchecked, for the love of a dream, the loss of an empire, and the lure of a fortune.

With nothing left to lose, an Oxford don, an English lord, a society physician and a French art dealer go after Harvey Metcalf, the expert in international stock fraud who took their money.

With nothing left to lose, an Oxford don, an English lord, a society physician and a French art dealer go after Harvey Metcalf, the expert in international stock fraud who took their money.

This follow-up to Archer's 'Kane and Abel' and 'The Prodigal Daughter' finds Florentyna Kaye, now President of the United States, the target of an assassination plot. FBI agent Mark Andrews has just one week to find the answers.

This follow-up to Archer's 'Kane and Abel' and 'The Prodigal Daughter' finds Florentyna Kaye, now President of the United States, the target of an assassination plot. FBI agent Mark Andrews has just one week to find the answers.

At first glance, Richard Armstrong and Keith Townsend seem to have little in common, but both of them are gamblers and are prepared to risk everything in their battle to control the biggest media empire in the world. Only one of them will succeed.

Continues the saga of 'Kane and Abel'. Kane's daughter, Florentyna Kane, has finally achieved her goal of becoming president of the United States, but a deadly conspiracy led by a senator threatens to silence her and her dreams forever.

Michael and Juliet Evans long for a baby but are forced to resort to a world of private clinics and medical jargon. As they wait, Juliet's grasp on reality begins to slide. Into the picture comes Anna, a young, single mother from Glasgow whose child is missing.

John Hamilton didn't want children with his wife, but that was because he had led a secret life for 20 years, in the shape of a mistress and a 19 year-old daughter. Now, following a car crash which has left him in a vegetative state, the three women that he deceived decide his fate.

Joyce believes she is the perfect mother. It is only when her daughter comes home from Oxford, pregnant and wanting to set up her own home, that she realises that there is more to being a perfect mother than she thought.

From the moment that Ruby Lennox announces her own conception, it is clear that she is a narrator who will leave no stone unturned in her account of the lives of the women in her family, both past and present. From her great-grandmother's affair with a french photographer to her mother's unfulfilled dreams of Hollywood glamour, Ruby takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through both World Wars, economic downfalls, the onset of the permissive 60s, and up to the present day. Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year.

From the moment that Ruby Lennox announces her own conception, it is clear that she is a narrator who will leave no stone unturned in her account of the lives of the women in her family, both past and present. From her great-grandmother's affair with a french photographer to her mother's unfulfilled dreams of Hollywood glamour, Ruby takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through both World Wars, economic downfalls, the onset of the permissive 60s, and up to the present day. Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year.

Cambridge is sweltering during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet - Lost on the left, Found on the right - and the two never seem to balance. Jackson has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. He is at that dangerous age when men suddenly notice that they're going to die eventually, inevitably, and there isn't a thing they can do about it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life is brought sharply into focus. CONTAINS ADULT THEMES AND STRONG LANGUAGE.

Young Isobel and her brother, Charles are abandoned by their parents to the loveless care of a sour aunt, stern grandmother and evil schoolmaster. They spend seven years yearning for the truth about their parents' disappearance and for their mother's return. It is their father, however, who returns - with a new young wife.

Young Isobel and her brother, Charles, are abandoned by their parents to the loveless care of a sour aunt, stern grandmother and evil schoolmaster. They spend seven years yearning for the truth about their parents' disappearance and for their mother's return. It is their father, however, who returns - with a new young wife.

A decade and a half has passed since Grace was locked up, at the age of 16, for the cold-blooded murders of her employer and his lover. Her alleged accomplice was hanged in 1843. Sixteen years on, Grace claims to have no memory of the event. Dr Simon Jordan attempts to uncover the truth.

Elisabeth, monstrous yet pitiable; Nate, her husband, a patchwork man, gentle, disillusioned; Lesje, a young woman at the natural history museum, for whom dinosaurs are as important as men. It is a sexual triangle; three people in thrall to the tragicomedy we call love.

This novel moves beyond the futuristic fantasy of 'The Handmaid's Tale' to an even more dystopian world, a world where language has almost entirely vanished. Snowman seems to be the last man on earth, the only survivor of an unnamed apocalypse. Gradually the reasons behind the disaster begin to unfold as Snowman undertakes a perilous journey to the remains of the bubble-dome complex where the sinister Paradise Project collapsed and near-global devastation began. CONTAINS ADULT THEMES.

A young divorcee returns to the remote island of her childhood in Northern Canada to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father. Flooded with memories, she is gradually drawn back into her past as the wild island exerts its elemental hold.

At the end of her life, Iris Griffen takes up her pen to record the secret history of her family; the romantic melodrama of its decline and fall between the two World Wars. The central enigma of Iris's tale is whether the death of her sister, Laura Chase, was suicide or an accident. This multidimensional 'novel-within-a-novel' weaves strands of pulp science fiction with sketches of Iris's present-day life, by way of newspaper clippings, letters and extracts from a book, 'The Blind Assassin' by her sister Laura, which details a clandestine love affair between a privileged young woman and a radical 'agitator'. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

In the repressive Republic of Gilead, Offred has just one function: to breed. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the days when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

The enchanting tale of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the bird determined to be more than an ordinary gull, determined to find a reason for living - determined to be free. A story for people who know there is more to living than meets the eye.

For Lucy Evans, life is perfect. An unrepentant tomboy, she lives with her best mate, Ollie, in a great flat, has her dream job reviewing computer games and just enough cash for a few pints and a takeaway. But life takes a turn for the worst when not only Ollie's girlfriend, Annoying Victoria, proposes and wants Lucy out of the flat but, soon afterwards, Lucy gets fired. The only place that'll hire Lucy wants an English rose as a receptionist, so out goes rugby, DMs and Heavy Metal; in comes Laura Ashley, high heels and Chardonnay. Can Lucy pull it off and save Ollie in the process?

In 1764, the great Samuel Johnson, irascible genius and toast of society, is plagued by ill-health and has become jaded with his bickering dependents. Suffering from a bout of melancholy, he accepts an introduction to the table of Henry Thrale, a wealthy Southwark brewer, and his vivacious wife Hester. It is left to Hester's neglected oldest daughter, known as Queeney, to provide her own sharp commentary on the destruction that ensues.

Set in 1950, this audiobook chronicles the life of troubled Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring young actress making her first hesitant steps onto the professional stage. She rapidly becomes infatuated with Meridith, the company director, and, when he spurns her advances, she turns to O'Hara, another actor, in an effort to make him jealous.

Beryl Bainbridge tackles the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The narrator, a 22-year-old named Morgan, brushes up against real-life victims such as John James Astor early in the voyage, while falling in love with the beautiful and unobtainable Wallis Ellery. The deadly maiden voyage of the world's largest ocean liner becomes a journey of self-discovery in this portentous, postmodern work, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Beryl Bainbridge tackles the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The narrator, a 22-year-old named Morgan, brushes up against real-life victims such as John James Astor early in the voyage, while falling in love with the beautiful and unobtainable Wallis Ellery. The deadly maiden voyage of the world's largest ocean liner becomes a journey of self-discovery in this portentous, postmodern work, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

When Master Georgie - George Hardy, surgeon and photographer - sets off from Victorian Liverpool for the heat and glitter of the Bosphorus to offer his services in the Crimea, there straggles behind him a small caravan of devoted followers; Myrtle, his adoring adoptive sister; lapsed geologist Dr Potter; and photographer's assistant and sometime fire-eater Pompey Jones, all of them driven onwards through a rising tide of death and disease by a shared, mysterious guilt. Winner of the Booker Prize.

When Master Georgie - George Hardy, surgeon and photographer - sets off from Victorian Liverpool for the heat and glitter of the Bosphorus to offer his services in the Crimea, there straggles behind him a small caravan of devoted followers; Myrtle, his adoring adoptive sister; lapsed geologist Dr Potter; and photographer's assistant and sometime fire-eater Pompey Jones, all of them driven onwards through a rising tide of death and disease by a shared, mysterious guilt. Winner of the Booker Prize.

In this audiobook Beryl Bainbridge retells the tragic tale of Captain Scott and his companions as they searched for the South Pole. Five first-person narratives give different perspectives on the voyage: Petty Officer Taff Evans; the ship's scholar, medic, and biologist Dr. Edward Wilson; Robert Falcon Scott; Lieutenant Henry Bowers; and Captain Lawrence Oates each give their account of the hardships, the problems, and finally the failure of their endeavour.

Jim is an eleven-year-old boy lost in Shanghai amidst the chaos of the Second World War. This dramatic story follows his fight for survival and his quest to find his parents. A bleak but honest vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint by war. This novel won The Guardian Fiction Prize.

When it comes to the mating game, Jane is still learning how to play. When she resorts to a hilarious old fashioned guide - 'How to Meet and Marry Mr Right', Jane discovers that with love, life and men, a girl doesn't always need rules. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

A loft apartment in London's East End; cool but doomed, demolition and redevelopment being slated for the following week. Ken Nott, devoutly contrarian leftish shock-jock attending mid-week wedding lunch, starts dropping stuff off the roof towards the deserted car park a hundred feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartment's remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Centre.

Young Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Relations with his father are strained, his brother is funnier and better-looking than he, and the woman of his dreams is out of his reach. His greatest preoccupation however is with Uncle Rory, professional traveller and some-time magician, whose most successful act to-date has been his own disappearance. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

Frank Cauldhame, no ordinary 16-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. His brother Eric, who was involuntarily committed after going insane, has escaped and is working his way home. His father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale and sociopath Frank spends his time creating grisly animal traps to deter people from invading his territory. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

Jane Graham is unmarried and pregnant when she is turned out of her home by her father. With nowhere to go she finds herself forced to rent a bug-ridden room at the top of a squalid house. All she wants to do is be left alone to wallow in her misery but her neighbours - Toby, a Jewish writer, and John, a jazz player - help to draw her back into life.

Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After the announcement in the Commons and the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his photograph is all over the papers. His disgrace is public, his position as curator of the Queen's pictures terminated. Maskell writes his own testament, in an act not unlike the restoration of one of his beloved pictures, in order for the process of verification and attribution to begin.

Tom Seymour is a child psychologist who has worked in the north of England for many years. One day, while walking by the river near his home, he rescues a young man from drowning, and realises that it's Danny Miller, a child murderer at whose trial he once gave evidence. Evidence he has since come to regard as flawed. Danny has served his sentence and is out of prison. But now he's asking for Tom's help.

Insomnia, exhaustion, recurring nightmares: Stephen Sharkey is suffering the after-effects of his career as a war reporter, most recently in Afghanistan, where Ben Frobisher, war photographer and friend, has been shot dead on assignment. Hanging up his flak jacket and turning his back on the everyday reality of war, Stephen moves into a quiet and peaceful cottage in the north of England. It seems the perfect environment in which to write his book on the representations of war, one that will be based largely on Frobisher's work. But Stephen's supposed isolation offers no protection from other people's suffering or the shattering effects of human brutality... CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

The first book in the 'Regeneration' trilogy. In Craiglockhart war hospital, Doctor William Rivers attempts to restore the sanity of officers whose experiences of the First World War have caused them to break down. When Siegfried Sassoon publishes his declaration of protest against the war, the authorities decide to have him declared mentally ill and send him to Craiglockhart. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

The first book in the 'Regeneration' trilogy. In Craiglockhart war hospital, Doctor William Rivers attempts to restore the sanity of officers whose experiences of the First World War have caused them to break down. When Siegfried Sassoon publishes his declaration of protest against the war, the authorities decide to have him declared mentally ill and send him to Craiglockhart. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

The second book of the 'Regeneration ' trilogy about British soldiers traumatised by World War I trench warfare and the methods used by psychiatrist William Rivers to treat them. Here, Lieutenant Billy Prior is tormented by figuring out by which side of several coins does he live - coward or hero, crazy or sane, homosexual or heterosexual, upper class or lower. He represents the upheaval in Britain during the war and the severe trauma felt by its soldiers. Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

The second book of the 'Regeneration ' trilogy about British soldiers traumatised by World War I trench warfare and the methods used by psychiatrist William Rivers to treat them. Here, Lieutenant Billy Prior is tormented by figuring out by which side of several coins does he live - coward or hero, crazy or sane, homosexual or heterosexual, upper class or lower. He represents the upheaval in Britain during the war and the severe trauma felt by its soldiers. Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

The third book in the 'Regneration' trilogy. Based on a mix of real and imagined characters and events, this book concentrates on Sarah, a young woman working in a munitions factory, and on Wilfred Owen. The position of women has been a sub-theme throughout the trilogy and here it moves to the forefront. The Booker Prize winner. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

The third book in the 'Regneration' trilogy. Based on a mix of real and imagined characters and events, this book concentrates on Sarah, a young woman working in a munitions factory, and on Wilfred Owen. The position of women has been a sub-theme throughout the trilogy and here it moves to the forefront. The Booker Prize winner. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

The women of Union Street, young and old, meet the harsh challenges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. Despite the rape of a child, a backstreet abortion and a grisly yet touching death, love and loyalty still exist, as far as they can in such a life. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

A mixture of fictional and historical narratives examining the extent of our knowledge about the world, in which stories echo each other as themes deepen and images recur, starting with a refreshing account of everyday life on Noah's Ark.

Arthur and George grew up worlds apart in late 19th-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time.This novel brings to life a long forgotten case that featured Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world's greatest detective. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

A retired English doctor, in solitary widowhood, makes a pilgrimage through the life and art of Gustave Flaubert, whose work he has always venerated. As he meditates on his passion, he reveals as much about himself as he uncovers about Flaubert.

Set in Northern England in the 1960s, this is the story of Vic Brown, a working class lad who falls in love with the beautiful but demanding Ingrid. As their relationship grows and changes, he comes to terms - the hard way - with adult life and what it really means to love. CONTAINS ADULT THEMES.

In this sequel to 'The Darling Buds of May', Charley Charleton talks the family into accompanying him to a ramshackle hotel in Brittany. They take Baby Oscar, the Rolls and Ma's unmarried passport.

When John Franklin brings his plane down into Occupied France at the height of the Second World War, there are two things on his mind - the safety of his crew and his own badly injured arm. It is a stroke of unbelievable luck when the family of a French farmer risk their lives to offer the airmen protection. During the hot summer weeks that follow, the English officer and the daughter of the house are drawn inexorably to each other.

A vintage collection of stories about Uncle Silas, a lovable bohemian and trouble-maker who loves a drop of cowslip wine, seen through the eyes of his captivated grand-nephew Edward.

Introducing the Larkins, a family with a place in popular mythology. Here they come, crashing their way through the English countryside in the wake of Pa, the quick-eyed, golden-hearted junk-dealer, and Ma, with a mouthful of crisps and a laugh like a jelly.

It is the year of the Queen's Coronation and Joanna, Kate and Poll are living in a London suburb with their mother and stepfather, Boyd, the local doctor. Accepting unquestioningly his unstinting love, they are not curious about their vanished natural father - but the safety of their lives is tenuous. The past arrives to upset the present in the person of Aunt Hat, a gossipy old friend who brings news from a different world of chaos and drama.

The last thing Tom Jones had expected was to run into Portia on holiday. His wife Amy knows he had an affair some four years ago, but she had never met 'the other woman'. What a curious twist of fate that she is on the same flight as them - and staying at the same hotel. Philip Mann, also staying at the Hotel Parthenon, is in Greece to make sense of the suicide of Matilda. Everywhere he goes he sees her face, runs over in his mind the events leading up to her death and plays back the memories.

This story is narrated by a painter, who specialises as a copyist. All around him, the women with whom he is in love leave signs which alter emotional details: Clio, his child-bride, is destructive in her pliancy; his first wife, Helen, betrays him; and Maisie, his forthright East End mother has her own secrets. And the two central figures - the painter's schizophrenic son and his neglected stepson - become the focus for a startling conclusion.

Fanny Pye, an independent widow in her sixties, suffers partial amnesia and agoraphobia after witnessing a violent crime. When she starts talking about giving away great sums of money to a family friend, her children start to worry. And when one of the men involved in the crime appears to be her new neighbour, Fanny struggles to piece together the jigsaw of her recent experiences with determination.

In six days Silas Mudd will celebrate his one-hundredth birthday. He is in alarmingly good health and his children think he wants good fun and the best outfits for his party. But, though grumpily flattered by the fuss, Silas's greater pleasure is to go over his life - and the women he has loved. But they've all gone now, and Silas is the only one left who knows exactly what is shoring up his family. So he sits and wonders what it would be like if he were to tell.

A sequel to Daphne Du Maurier's 'Rebecca' (book code 7669). It is twenty years since Rebecca's death and the inquest, which famously - and controversially - passed a verdict of suicide. But what really happened to Rebecca? Was she the manipulative, promiscuous femme fatale her husband claimed? Or the tragic heroine that others had suggested? The official story, the 'truth', has only had Maxim's version of events to consider. But all that is about to change, with the discovery of a black notebook with two handwritten words on the title page - 'Rebecca's Tale'.

When Ruari MacDonald appears at the guesthouse where Kirsty works, she is unaware that he is visiting the city from his home on a remote Scottish island to find a bride!

The Ransomes have been burgled - everything has gone, even the toilet paper. And for the stuffy solicitor and his downtrodden wife it marks a turning point in their lives which becomes a kind of liberation. Nothing will ever be the same again, even when their possessions mysteriously re-appear, exactly as they left them...

Clive has died young, in Peru and in circumstances which make some of his many friends uneasy. The congregation gathered for his memorial service is unexpectedly distinguished - actors, pop stars, politicians and even members of the government. How did they all know Clive? And why does his death make so many of them anxious? When Clive's friends begin to stand up and share their memories of the dead man a number of uncomfortable truths are revealed.

The 'Uncommon Reader' of the title is none other than H M the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely (J R Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton Burnett, and the classics) and intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people such as the Prime Minister and his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world, and loses patience with much that she has to do.

Anna's father is a miser and a grouch. He is raising his two daughters in a small pious industrial town, where everybody seems to eat nothing but bread and butter and go to church. But then things change as Anna falls in love with an unsuitable character and starts to defy her parents.

Mapp and Lucia finally meet in a continuation of the 'Mapp and Lucia' series. Lucia is eager to wrest the reins of social supremacy from the incumbent Miss Elizabeth Mapp and to install herself as benevolent dictator of their village of Tilling. In their polite acts of sabotage Mapp and Lucia tear up the conventions of drawing-room diplomacy and enter a protracted conflict against a backdrop of fetes, garden parties, musical soirees and bridge evenings.

Mapp and Lucia finally meet in a continuation of the 'Mapp and Lucia' series. Lucia is eager to wrest the reins of social supremacy from the incumbent Miss Elizabeth Mapp and to install herself as benevolent dictator of their village of Tilling. In their polite acts of sabotage Mapp and Lucia tear up the conventions of drawing-room diplomacy and enter a protracted conflict against a backdrop of fetes, garden parties, musical soirees and bridge evenings.

The second book in the 'Mapp and Lucia' series, introducing Miss Mapp, an arch-schemer and social climber from the fictional British town of Tilling who spends her days using opera glasses and a notebook to chart her neighbours' affairs. Among her interests are Major Benjamin Flint, whom she has been trying to marry for years, and the underhanded Miss Susan Poppit.

The first book in the 'Mapp and Lucia' series. Emmeline Lucas, known to her friends as Lucia, is the undisputed social leader of the town of Riseholme in the south of England, her subjects including her husband Phillip (known as Peppino) who writes and publishes prose poems, Georgie Pillson who plays duets with Lucia and collects bibelots, Olga Bracely, the operatic soprano and Signor Cortese who has just composed an opera for her. Lucia and Georgie pepper their conversation with Italian phrases, but are terrified of meeting a genuine Italian speaker who might expose their ignorance of the language.

When the murdered body of a local boy is found in the woods, suspicions transform young Marsha's once-secure neighbourhood. Marsha begins to watch her neighbours and when Mr Green, the shy bachelor from next-door, takes an interest in her mother, Marsha is drawn into a cruel chain of events. Winner of the Orange Prize.

A middle-aged divorcee inherits a house in the Welsh village where she grew up and decides to start afresh and rebuild her life. She begins to renew old friendships, make new ones and re-examine her relationships with her mother and daughter.

When Sissie Slipper slips, the world of fashion gasps. When her mentor Rudolph dies and Sissie loses a tooth, her life as a Supermodel is at an end, but that leaves a wider world to explore. Fortunately, she has the mysterious, mocking figure of the Author to guide her forward on her pilgrimage.

Generous-hearted Benny and the elfin Eve Malone have been best friends throughout their childhoods in sleepy Knockglen. When they both go to study in Dublin, they meet a circle of friends that includes handsome Jack Foley and the selfish and beautiful Nan Mahon, whose ambition will drag them all into trouble. As Knockglen is surprised into new life the two girls, Benny and Eve, discover that among the many distractions of growing up, true friendship is the greatest gift of all.

From the acclaimed author of 'Circle of Friends' comes a vintage collection of four stories set in the heart of Dublin's fashionable Southside.

Having grown up in small Irish seaside town in the 1950s, Clare and David meet again years later as students in Dublin. But eventually their home town will draw them back, and it is there that this drama of ambition, betrayal and love reaches its turbulent conclusion.

This novel is concerned with the linked episodes about a schoolteacher and his motley collection of students, who find extraordinary new leases of life through the Italian evening classes in which they all participate.

An account of four fateful years in the life of a small Irish town, and in particular of the family who run the local pub. The novel features interlocking stories of loves lost and won, ambitions nurtured and secrets betrayed.

Evacuated from Blitz-battered London, genteel Elizabeth White is sent to stay with the Irish O'Connors. It is the beginning of a bond between Elizabeth and Aisling O'Connor which will survive twenty turbulent years.

In these 22 stories, Binchy captures the intimate life dramas of several contemporary women who share a common London commute. From a woman's affair with a married man to a secretary's shocking secret life, these tales explore the intricacies of every woman's heart.

Four strangers, with nothing in common but a need to escape, meet in a Greek taverna high above the small village of Aghia Anna. From Ireland, America, Germany and England, they have each left their homes and their old lives, when a shocking tragedy throws them unexpectedly together. Fiona is a young nurse, trying to make her family understand her need to follow her own path. Thomas desperately misses his young son. Elsa abruptly left her career as a television presenter, but someone from her past refuses to let her go. And shy, quiet David is determined to make a stand against his overbearing father. With Andreas, the taverna owner and the help of Vonni, a middle-aged Irishwoman who lives in the village, they find solutions - though not necessarily the ones they anticipated...

Every table at Quentins Restaurant has a story to tell: tales of love, betrayal and revenge. The staff who come and go have stories of their own, and the restaurant itself has had times when it looked fair for success and others when it seemed doomed to failure. Ella Brady wants to make a documentary about the renowned Dublin restaurant that has captured the spirit of a generation, but, as she is forced to confront the most devastating dilemma in her own life, Ella wonders if some stories are too sacred to be told...

Friends since college, Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather plan to open a catering company in Dublin, but not everyone is supportive - such as a mother-in-law, an overworked husband, a distracted girlfriend and terrible twins. Tom and Cathy turn increasingly to each other for support.

Ria Lynch and Marilyn Vine have never met. Ria lives in a big ramshackle house in Tara Road, Dublin, which is filled with family and friends, while Marilyn lives in New England, absorbed in her career. A chance phone call brings them together and they decide to exchange homes. So a magical summer begins, full of discovery, unexpected friendships and new hope.

A novel which follows the fortunes of eight children who carve their names on the copper beech behind the local school and looks at the drama behind the apparently quiet life of a small Irish community.

Growing up in a tiny lakeside village, Kit McMahon worries that her beautiful mother does not fit in - she wanders alone by the lake, night after night, until the night she disappears without trace. Without the mother that she loved and defended, Kit is determined to make something of her life.

The lilac-coloured minibus belongs to Tom. Each Friday night it is a meeting place for the same seven people who use it to travel home from Dublin to spend the weekend in Rathdoon. Each one has an inner life unknown to those fellow passengers.

A silver wedding usually means a family gathering - difficult occasions at the best of times. But for the Doyles it will be more difficult than most, for each of them is keeping up a front.

The town of Rossmore is a special place, full of character charm. Nestled beside the Whitethorn Woods, the town has grown since the days when it was small and friendly and everyone knew everyone else; now it has chain stories and traffic problems and housing estates. But still, there are the woods, full of spiky bushes and criss-crossed with paths; and there's St Ann's Well, where generations have come to pray or make wishes or just to look back at the pretty little town. Which is why there is going to be such a fuss about the plans for the new motorway. It's going to by-pass Rossmore, cutting through Whitethorn Woods and endangering the well itself. The new road will bring jobs and relieve traffic in the town; for others, it will destroy businesses and leave the town a backwater. The people of Rossmore are divided. There is a lot of land standing in the way of the great road of progress. Quite by accident the decision rests on Neddy Nolan - the most honest man in Rossmore.

The author Julia Blackburn imagines the lives of her father and grandfather on the island of Mauritius, as seen through the eyes of each man in boyhood. Native customs mingle with Christian beliefs, and the 'evil eye' can be directed at anyone.

Charlotte's family are separated with the outbreak of the First World War. When the war ends, they return home to Scotland a different family and must cope with the changes war has wrought, and those still to come.

A love story set in Nazi-occupied Jersey in 1940. Nurse Holly loses her fiance at Dunkirk and throws all her energy into hating the Germans who have taken away her beloved and invaded her home. But she is forced to admit she respects and admires Dr Peter Schmidt and they begin a relationship. Events come to a head when typhoid strikes.

Born with a degenerative hip, Sadie grows up in a Barnardo's home with only a pair of scarlet ribbons to remind her of her mother. In 1927, fully cured, she is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to start a new life in Canada. But life seems far from perfect on the Trikhardts' farm in Ontario. A freak tornado reclaims Sadie's freedom, but will she be happy?

14-year-old Roxanne, a farmer's daughter, runs away to London and to a life in showbusiness. But at the height of her career disaster strikes, and she returns to Devon, where she learns to accept that love is a thing of the past - or so she likes to imagine.

Bogarde's debut novel, set in 1945, sees the British Army attempting to carry out a caretaking operation - pacifying civil strife on a South East Asian island seething with revolt following the Japanese occupation.

The sequel to 'Jericho'. William Caldicott has travelled to France to uncover the mystery of his brother James's disappearance. Having learnt the truth, William also discovers that he has inherited the lease to Jericho, James's Provencal house.

William is a writer, married with children, and about to start divorce proceedings. Then he receives a cryptic letter from his younger brother, James, which speaks of his intention to disappear. With the letter is a key to a house in a French village, and an intrigued William goes to investigate.

Set in one of the last great villas of the 1920s on Cape Ferrat, as well as cosmopolitan London and the home of a landed German family within the shadow of the wall. The novel is a human comedy, as well as a compassionate story of mature and immature love.

An 'Oxford Bookworm' title that uses a vocabulary of only 700 words designed for language development. One day, a farmer tells a farm boy to take everything out of an old building and throw it away. 'It's all rubbish,' he says. In the middle of all the rubbish, the boy finds a beautiful old piano. He has never played before, but now, when his fingers touch the piano, he begins to play. He closes his eyes and the music comes to him.

Ordered to build a bridge, Allied prisoners pit their wits against their Japanese captors during the Second World War. A moving story of men struggling to survive against brutality.

As millions are slaughtered on the Western Front, a ridiculous and little-reported campaign is being waged in East Africa - a war they continued after the Armistice because no one told them to stop.

Boyd's social satire centers around Lorimer Black, the scion of a gypsy clan who has transformed himself into a dashing and cultivated insurance adjuster. One day, instead of meeting with the business associate he expects, Lorimer is greeted by a hanged man. From then on the hapless hero is swept into a web of intrigue involving rock musicians, beautiful women, ominous job firings and something called the Institute of Lucid Dreams.

Young, alone, and far from her family in England, Hope Clearwater lives on Brazzaville Beach, on the coast of Africa. This audacious novel tells the story of the extraordinary events that have led her to Africa, exploring her role as a survivor of the cruelties of man and ape alike.

A woman architect in 1930s Los Angeles is approached by an elderly man who claims to be her father. Although unsure, she allows him to convince her to accompany him to Lisbon to search for the lost love of his life. On the trans-Atlantic voyage, he tells her a strange tale of love, murder and honour in the midst of the Philippine insurrection against America.

For Nan, on the threshold of puberty, and her younger sister Mary, innocence blends with the trials of convent life and a shadowy knowledge of the facts of life. The sisters are regaled with tales from the dubious past of Nellie the maid and their home is a haven to a stream of unwelcome guests.

Nine year old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution or the Holocaust. When he moves house he meets Shumel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas. Features an exclusive interview with the author.

Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university. Timid Vice-Chancellors pale before his threats of disruption and reactionary colleagues are crushed beneath his merciless Marxist logic.

The first book in a trilogy. In 1905 a young kitchen maid leaves Fairley Hall. Emma Harte is sixteen, single and pregnant. By 1968 she is one of the richest women in the world, ruler of a business empire stretching from Yorkshire to the glittering cities of America and the rugged vastness of Australia. But what is the price she has paid?

Nicky is a charismatic American foreign correspondent. Her life has been governed by her career ever since British diplomat, Charles Devereaux, broke off their engagement and committed suicide. Watching a news item 14 months later, Nicky is shocked to see his face in a crowd in Rome.

Sebastian, the fifty-six-year-old patriarch of the Locke clan, is handsome, intelligent and charismatic. The head of the Locke Foundation, funded by the vast family fortune built by his forefathers, he is committed to relieving the suffering of those in genuine need. He is seen as a beacon of light in today's darkly violent world. The police are baffled when Sebastian is found dead in mysterious circumstances. Has he been murdered, and if so who would want to kill the world's greatest philanthropist?