There are many books that depict the permutations of growing older

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Reading lists

The best books that celebrate old age

Heartbreak Hotel

From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever, Heartbreak Hotel is now re-jacketed along with the rest of Deborah Moggach's books in gorgeous series style

Another hilarious and heart-warming tale from the author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

This warm, funny and generous romp of a novel is a delight

An addictive and funny novel: if there is a book more like a Richard Curtis film, you’d be hard-pressed to find it

A hilarious romp that showcases Moggach’s loving understanding of human foibles and which you will finish reading feeling a whole lot better about yourself

This is a comic performance so footsure it almost tap-dances

Moggach’s glorious sense of humour, the ease with which she inhabits her characters and her affections for them are apparent on every page. No wonder this astute and funny exploration of love and longing is being adapted for television

Perceptive, engaging and at times laugh-out-loud funny, Moggach writes with a sharp wit to create a very readable narrative

The author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel repeats her earlier recipe by setting loose a group of quirky characters in a run-down hotel, this time in the fictional Knockton in Wales

[Moggach] is witty, on the button when it comes to the state of the nation and, above all, heroically generous with the warmth she dispenses. It’s a real skill to do this without descending into sickliness. Perfect for easing into autumn

There's a generous warmth to Moggach's characterisation. She has plenty of fun with Buffy's slightly hammy cast in what is essentially a well spun comic yarn, probing personal foibles and ill-advised attachments (including Buffy's own chaotic amorous history) for the gentle edification of all. The result is an affable, up­beat entertainment with plenty of wit and humour

Another hilarious book from the author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel... A great summer read

Deborah Moggach is the author of many successful novels including Tulip Fever and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which was made into a top-grossing film starring Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and Maggie Smith. Her screenplays include the film of Pride and Prejudice, which was nominated for a BAFTA. She lives in Wales.

From Deborah Moggach, bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, comes another hilarious and romantic comedy, this time set in a run-down B&amp;B in Wales… 
 
When retired actor Buffy decides to up sticks from London and move to rural Wales, he has no idea what he is letting himself in for. 
 
In possession of a run-down B&amp;B that leans more towards the shabby than the chic and is miles from nowhere, he realises he needs to fill the beds – and fast. 
 
Enter a motley collection of guests: Harold, whose wife has run off with a younger woman; Amy, who’s been unexpectedly dumped by her (not-so) weedy boyfriend and Andy, the hypochondriac postman whose girlfriend is much too much for him to handle. 
 
But under Buffy’s watchful eye, this disparate group of strangers find they have more in common than perhaps they first thought... 
 
‘Addictive and funny... If there is a book more like a Richard Curtis film, you’d be hard-pressed to find it’ Psychologies 
 
'Just as exuberant and hilarious as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' Good Housekeeping

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The smash-hit bestseller The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is now re-jacketed along with the rest of Deborah Moggach’s books in gorgeous series style

Discover the Sunday Times bestselling novel that inspired the beloved hit film starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel and Penelope Wilton. 
 
Enticed by advertisements for a luxury retirement home in India, a group of strangers leave England to begin a new life. 
 
On arrival, however, they discover the palace is a shell of its former self, the staff are more than a little eccentric and the days of the Raj appear to be long gone. 
 
But, as they soon discover, life and love can begin again, even in the most unexpected circumstances. 
 
Previously published with the title These Foolish Things. 
 
'A glorious romp that will inspire roars of recognition' Sunday Express

Superb... Moggach has served us a treat with this novel. Moving, sincere, funny

A glorious romp that will inspire roars of recognition

Discover the Sunday Times bestselling novel that inspired the beloved film. 
 
 The book that inspired the box office hit The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel and Penelope Wilton 
 
Enticed by advertisements for a luxury retirement home in India, a group of strangers leave England to begin a new life. 
 
On arrival, however, they discover the palace is a shell of its former self, the staff are more than a little eccentric and the days of the Raj appear to be long gone. 
 
But, as they soon discover, life and love can begin again, even in the most unexpected circumstances. 
 
Previously published with the title These Foolish Things

Something to Hide

The bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever is back with a warm, witty and wise novel about the unexpected twists that later life can bring …

This is a great read, full of humour, insight and exotic foreign flavour

This is an absorbing read, with surprises and moments of tension that make it a genuine page-turner

Pulling the reader along on a fast-paced transcontinental journey, Something to Hide is engaging, poignant and prompts snorts of laughter

An unpredictable tale of love loss and deception

A skillful and genuinely moving page-tuner with plenty of surprises

A poignant story of the secrets and deceptions that lie at the heart of every relationship

This is classic Moggach: readable, memorable and eminently filmable

a gentle, easy-reading tale of happenstance and second chances

[A] sprightly tale… [With] a lightness of touch

Funny and touching with a fast-moving plot – the perfect Summer read.

The bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever is back with a warm, witty and wise novel about the unexpected twists that later life can bring… 
 
‘Nobody in the world knows our secret ... that I’ve ruined Bev’s life, and she’s ruined mine.’ 
 
Petra’s love life is a bit of a car-crash, even in her sixties. But then she falls for Jeremy, an old chum, visiting from abroad. The catch? Jeremy is her best friend’s husband. 
 
And just as Petra is beginning to relax guiltily into her happy ever after, she finds herself catapulted to West Africa, and to Bev, her best friend who she’s been betraying so spectacularly. 
 
It turns out that no matter where you are in the world, everyone has something to hide. Can Bev – can anyone – be trusted?

Close Relations

‘A witty and intelligent tale about the terrifying, seductive lie of stability – emotional, physical, financial, sexual’ Mail on Sunday 
 
Gordon Hammond, sixty-five, a builder who has built up his own, modestly successful business, has a heart attack. Whilst recovering in hospital he falls in love with April, a young black nurse, and leaves Dorothy, his wife of 45 years to set up home with her. 
 
Dorothy is released like a loose cannon into the lives of her three daughters and chaos ensues. More relationships break up, passions run high and dramatic developments ensue that will change the Hammond family forever.

Bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Ex-Wives

From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel this is a funny and warm novel for anyone who has ever been curious about their partner’s past…

You’ll be hooked from the first page of this original, funny book… Just delicious

The Ex-Wives marries comedy and canniness into a novel that’s warm, tolerant, shrewd and exuberant

Cracking good dialogue, excellent jokes and laser sharp

Deborah Moggach is brilliant at capturing just the right voice for her characters

Discover this funny and warm novel for anyone who has ever been curious about their partner's past from the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 
 
 Meet Buffy. 
 
 With three ex-wives, a failing career and only his dog George for company, Buffy's bachelorhood is looking worryingly confirmed. 
 
 Until he meets Celeste. 
 
 Dazzled by love, Buffy has no idea that Celeste is systematically researching his ex-wives, children and step-children, and unearthing secrets that will change all their lives... 
 
 'Wonderfully funny' Daily Mail 
 
 'Marries comedy and canniness into a novel that's warm, tolerant, shrewd and exuberant' Sunday Times

Christmas at Heartbreak Hotel

Twin Beds

An exclusive-to-ebook Christmas story from bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, featuring the loveable cast of her bestselling comic novel Heartbreak Hotel

Christmas should be a joyous occasion filled with peace and love, but the looming prospect of the festive season fills Russell ‘Buffy’ Buffery with dread. Retired actor, thrice divorced, hapless father – Buffy is well versed in the complicated family Christmas, shuffling between exes and children. 
 
Except this year will be different. He has inherited a B&amp;B in rural Wales, and can finally escape the nearest and dearest, and play ‘Myne Host’ to a group of paper-hatted strangers, on escape-routes from their own clans. But when the strangers check in with their emotional baggage, and the Cab Sav begins to flow, Buffy soon realises that Christmas is never without its little complications… 
 
Join the gang at Heartbreak Hotel as they run riot, and celebrate Christmas the Buffy way.

These Foolish Things

Now a major motion picture - The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - starring Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel, Tom Wilkinson, Judi Dench, Penelope Wilton and Celia Imrie.

She writes beautifully, as always, and the phrase-making is as good as the characterisation...brilliant

These Foolish Things, a kind of less savage version of Kingsley Amis's unbearably funny novel Ending Up. Moggach's prose is markedly more graceful than Agatha Christie's, her moral world is not dissimilar

It is characterisation at which Moggach excels. Her gift is to perceive and describe our confusions about life-and to write with feeling about the continual quest for love and happiness that is part of the human condition

Moggach has served us a treat with this novel. Moving, sincere, funny, terrifying in places, it is a truthful view of old age and what it brings

Discover the Sunday Times bestselling novel that inspired the beloved film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 
 
 The book that inspired the box office hit The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel and Penelope Wilton 
 
 Enticed by advertisements for a luxury retirement home in India, a group of strangers leave England to begin a new life. 
 
 On arrival, however, they discover the palace is a shell of its former self, the staff are more than a little eccentric and the days of the Raj appear to be long gone. 
 
 But, as they soon discover, life and love can begin again, even in the most unexpected circumstances. 
 
 'One of Britain's foremost women writers' Daily Telegraph

Because I am a Girl

EIGHT AUTHORS, EIGHT COUNTRIES, EIGHT UNFORGETTABLE STORIES

Edgy and bold...not your standard do-good, feel-good collection at all

Because I am a girl I am less likely to go to school 
Because I am a girl I am more likely to suffer from malnutrition 
Because I am a girl I am more likely to suffer violence in the home 
Because I am a girl I am more likely to marry and start a family before I reach my twenties. 
 
Eight authors have visited eight different countries and spoken to young women and girls about their lives, struggles and hopes. The result is an extraordinary collection of writings about prejudice, abuse, and neglect, but also about courage, resilience and changing attitudes. 
 
Proceeds from sales of this book will go to PLAN, one of the world's largest child-centered community development organisations.

In the Dark

From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a story of war and desire set in South London's dark and dirty streets during WWI.

From the first perfect sentence this novel is a gem. Its pared sentences and vocabulary really capture the time

The Moggacch miracle continues- here's another vivid, gripping yarn from the author of Tulip Fever... with a plot as twisty as a mountain road

This wartime novel of ordinary Londoners is atmospheric and buzzing with electricity... a spirited portrait of lives thrown into turmoil by the Great War

Like the recent novels by Ian McEwan and Sarah Waters, In the Dark successfully modernises the past. By focusing on life's murkier undercurrents... the characters come to seem appealingly familiar

Deborah Moggach's affection for her compex, damaged characters shines through the dark setting in this tender, funny and unsettling book

The details of life in an Edwardian household are researched to perfection

The great joy of this tender little novel is Deborah Moggach's sensory imagination

The characterisation is superb, Moggach has brilliantly resurrected a world of genteel penury and intense, furtive sex, and the book exudes quiet excellence

From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 
 
1916. Pretty Eithne Clay runs a ramshackle South London boarding house with the help of her teenage son, Ralph, and their maid, Winnie. Struggling to keep herself, her lodgers, and her son going as every day life vanishes in the face of war, Eithne’s world is transformed by the arrival of Mr Turk, the virile, carnal, carnivorous local butcher who falls passionately in love with her. As the house bursts to life with the electricity – metaphorical and real – he brings, dark secrets come to light…

Hot Water Man

From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, comes a story of West meets East in Karachi.

Wincingly funny…a tragicomedy of manners and errors. An ambitious book showing Asia through British and American eyes – compassionate, but never sloppy, it notes the flaws and frailties of East and West without mockery

No neater entertainment has emerged from the debris of our past on the sub-continent

From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 
 
East is East and West is West… 
 
Fresh from London, Christine and Donald Manley have come to the alien swelter of Karachi: Christine to conceive a child, Donald to sell the Pill for a pharmaceutical company. Among the ex-pats already there is straight-talking Duke Hanson, whose all-American values cannot prevent him falling, then sinking, helplessly in love with a sophisticated Pakistani girl. In the ensuing tangle of Anglo-American-Oriental relations, the strangest things for those who have come out East are revealed in the very people with whom they arrived…

Seesaw

'Provocative, enthralling... Truly, Moggach gets better and better' - Daily Mail 
 
From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Deborah Moggach is a delight to read-her characters are wonderfully alive, and their stories grip us unequivocally... the novel is enjoyable from first to last

It is characterisation at which Moggach excels. Her gift is to perceive and describe our confusions about life... and to write with feeling about the continual quest for love and happiness that is part of the human condition

A neat plot... [with] dark flashes of hubris and nemesis

Moggach's subject is the rickety edifice we call the family, which she comes at armed with both a wrecking ball and an insatiable curiosity to note the particular way it collapses

From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 
 
Take an ordinary, well-off family like the Prices. Watch what happens when one Sunday seventeen-year-old Hannah disappears without a trace. See how the family rallies when a ransom note demands half a million pounds for Hannah's safe return. 
 
But it's when Hannah comes home that the story really begins. 
 
Now observe what happens to a family when they lose their house, their status, all their wealth. Note how they disintegrate under the pressures of guilt and poverty and are forced to confront their true selves. And, finally, wait to hear about Hannah, who has the most shocking surprise in store of all.

Driving In The Dark

A funny and moving novel about a man at the crossroads of his life, from the widely-celebrated, bestselling author of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Poignant and funny... Deborah Moggach is brilliant at capturing just the right voice for her characters

Disturbing and witty...a deftly-described odyssey that places the battle of the sexes in a new arena

Moggach, for the purposes of this book, has turned herself into a bloke. His monologue throughout strikes me as totally authentic, but not only does Moggach get his lingo right, she thinks through his head, dramatizing his confusion, decency, wit, pain and determination. This is not just ventriloquism, but empathy so complete as to be phenomenal

From the bestselling author of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 
 
Desmond never did have much luck with women - except in getting them through their driving tests. Now a coach driver, he is at the most crucial crossroads of his life. His wife has thrown him out. The crisis serves only to deepen his despair over another failed liaison - until he elects to steer his coach on a spectacularly reckless quest for the son he has never seen.

Final Demand

From the author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel comes a poignant novel of human frailty, temptation and tragedy

An astonishing story of broken dreams, greed and human frailty.A tale of extraordinary power. Quite simply outstanding

Hugely entertaining.immensely thought-provoking

Deborah Moggach can fit a complex idea onto a postage stamp... ordinary human crises are described tersely, compassionately, and with a wit as dry as the Sahara

Moggach's delight in spinning her story, and in the minor characters she invents, is infectious

‘Final Demand is strong on narrative, dashing the reader along, but, though fast-paced and transparently written, nevertheless creates people of memorable complexity’ Independent 
 
 Natalie is a girl who should be going somewhere. Beautiful, bright and ambitious, she’s stuck in a dead-end job in the accounts department of Nu-Line Telecommunications, living her life through wild weekends and yearning for something more. 
 
 When she sees a chance to change her life, she takes it. After all, it’s only a minor crime. Nobody’s going to get hurt. But other people do get hurt, because Natalie’s actions do have consequences – tragic consequences. Poignant and beautifully written, Final Demand is a cautionary tale about the battle between greed and love, about human hopes and our own frailty in the face of temptation. 
 
 ‘A chilling, impeccably plotted novel’ Cosmopolitan 
 
 ‘Powerful…vividly evoked’ Sunday Times

Deborah Moggach

A story of love, deceit, changelings, and mistaken identity worthy of a Restoration dramatist

A sumptuous and enthralling novel about art, love, illusion and money...with the denouement of a classic

A byzantine plot that hurtles towards disaster, while retaining the polished veneer of a Dutch interior

Clever, spry and sad in equal measure...a pacy plot whose twists and shifts of viewpoint make for much anxious page-turning

A scintillating story of lust, deception and retribution

Beautifully written...with a featherlight touch, Moggach keeps the tension at fever-pitch until the final hilarious – and entirely unexpected – climax

'A gorgeous novel' Mail on Sunday 
 
From the bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel comes a thrilling story of power, lust and deception... 
 
Seventeenth-century Amsterdam - a city in the grip of tulip fever. 
 
Sophia's husband Cornelis is one of the lucky ones grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his beautiful bride. But as the portrait grows, so does the passion between Sophia and the painter; and ambitions, desires and dreams breed an intricate deception and a reckless gamble. 
 
Now a major film starring Oscar winners Dame Judi Dench, Alicia Vikander and Christoph Waltz and adapted for the screen by Sir Tom Stoppard.

Deborah Moggach

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The best books that celebrate old age

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