Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he also travelled extensively and converted to Catholicism. In 1939 Waugh was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, experiences which informed his Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-61). His most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited (1945), was written while on leave from the army. Waugh died in 1966.

Evelyn Waugh

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Louis de Bernières

25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
'A true diamond of a novel, glinting with comedy and tragedy' Daily Mail 
 
It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals but over time he proves himself to be civilised, humorous &ndash; and a consummate musician. 
 
When Pelagia, the local doctor's daughter, finds her letters to her fiancé go unanswered, Antonio and Pelagia draw close and the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender? 
 
'Louis de Bernières is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh...he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste' Evening Standard

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Mary Wesley

Seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe has just waved off to war the two young men she has loved for the best part of her life when the air raid sirens begin to wail out across London. She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger called Evelyn, frail and older than his years, who offers her the protection of his house and his family before dying suddenly in the night. 
 
Determined to avoid being sent to Canada to join her mother and new step-father, and still grieving for her lost lovers, Juno instead finds herself on a train to Cornwall in search of Evelyn's family. There she discovers the blossoming of an English spring into which the war only occasionally intrudes and finds at last a peace for herlself and a world in which she is more than simply part of the furniture.

Part Of The Furniture

Rose Tremain

'The best thing from Denmark since Hamlet.' John Julius Norwich 
 
In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realises that the musicians perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, Peter Claire understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are waging war to the death. 
 
Designated the King's 'Angel' because of his good looks, he finds himself falling in love with the young woman who is the companion of the King's adulterous and estranged wife, Kirsten. With his loyalties fatally divided between duty and passion, how can Peter Claire find the path that will realise his hopes and save his soul? 
 
'The best historical novelist of her generation. She evokes the past with sensuality, wit and superb sleights of hand... The plot is ingenious...an unforgettable tapestry of Eros and art.' A. N. Wilson

Music & Silence

D J Taylor

Glamorous Alice Keach is one of 1930s London's foremost hostesses. Despite humble American origins, she has secured her place in high society through marriage to one of England's wealthiest bachelors. 
 
But Alice has a secret. Its roots run years back, and miles away, to the dust-blasted prairies of Kansas. It corncerns a lost little boy left under the haphazard guidance of an eccentric uncle. Now, a visit from America looks set to blow apart Alice's glittering pre-eminence forever.

Ask Alice

Tom Crewe

Discover Tom Crewe's magnificent debut novel about forbidden desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England... 
 
'Beautifully written' Graham Norton 
'Subtle, sexy and beautifully crafted' Sarah Waters 
'Lavishly imagined' Sunday Times 
______________ 
 
After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John has finally found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile, Henry is convinced that his new unconventional marriage will bring freedom. 
 
United by a shared vision, they begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality. 
 
Before it can be published however, Oscar Wilde is arrested and their daring book threatens to throw them, and all around them, into danger. How high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living? 
______________ 
 
'A very fine new writer' Kate Atkinson 
'I loved this book' Zadie Smith 
'Some of the best writing on desire I've read' Douglas Stuart 
'Extraordinary' Jonathan Bailey 
'Filled with nuance and tenderness . . . charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving' Colm Tóibín

The New Life

Anne Tyler

Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. 
 
The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore, he was smitten, and in the heat of World War II fervour, they marry in haste. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counter-culture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayers of later years, we watch their lives unspool and see the consequences of their very mismatched marriage. 
 
**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE** 
 
'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce 
 
'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali 
 
'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks 
 
'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson

The Amateur Marriage

Michael Ondaatje

**LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018** 
 
An elegiac novel set in post-WW2 London about memory, family secrets and lies, from the internationally acclaimed author of The English Patient 
 
 It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women all who seem determined to protect Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? A dozen years later, Nathaniel journeys through recollection, reality and imagination to uncover all he didn’t know or understand in that time, to piece together a story that feels something like the truth. 
 
 ‘A novel of shadowy brilliance’ The Times 
 
 ‘Fiction as rich, as beautiful, as melancholy as life itself, written in the visionary language of memory’ Observer 
 
 ‘Ondaatje brilliantly threads the mysteries and disguises and tangled loyalties and personal yearnings of the secret world... I haven’t read a better novel this year’ Telegraph

Warlight

Vesna Goldsworthy

'A beautiful haunting novel… looking at a familiar London through a frosty, snowy lens. Wonderful' Caryl Phillips 
 
The London winter of 1947 is as cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. Albertine, the wife of a British army officer often abroad on covert government business, finds herself increasingly lonely. Eager to distract herself with work, she takes a job as companion to the mysterious 'Monsieur Ka', a Russian émigré. As she is drawn into Ka’s dramatic past, her own life is shaken to its foundations. For in this family of former princes, there are present temptations which could profoundly affect her future.

Monsieur Ka

Margaret Forster

London 1844, and a shy young woman has arrived to take up a new position in the grandeur of No. 50, Wimpole Street. Subtly and compellingly, Lady's Maid gives voice to Elizabeth Wilson's untold story, her complex relationship with her mistress, Elizabeth Barrett, and her dramatic role in the most famous elopement in history.

Lady's Maid

Nicholas Shakespeare

A young Englishman visits Cold War Leipzig with a group of students and falls for an East German girl who is only just beginning to wake up to the way her society is governed. Her situation touches him, but he is too frightened to help. He spends decades convincing himself that he is not in love until one day, with Germany now reunited, he decides to go back and look for her. But who was she, how will his actions have affected her, and how will her find her? All he knows of her identity is the nickname he gave her - Snowleg. 
 
Snowleg is a powerful love story that explores the close, fraught relationship between England and Germany, between a man who grows up believing himself to be a chivalrous English public schoolboy and a woman who tries to live loyally under a repressive regime.

Snowleg

Ian McEwan

Discover the modern classic that has sold over two million copies. 
 
&lsquo;A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended&rsquo; 
 
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. 
 
Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever, as Briony commits a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone. 
 
'The best thing he has ever written' Observer 
 
**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

Atonement

Irène Némirovsky

From the author of the bestselling Suite Française. 
 
Pierre and Agnès marry for love against the wishes of his parents and the family patriarch, the tyrannical industrialist Julien Hardelot, provoking a family feud which cascades down the generations. Even when war is imminent and Pierre is called up, the old man is unforgiving. Taut, evocative and beautifully paced, All Our Worldly Goods points up with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close were those two wars, how history repeated itself, tragically, shockingly... 
 
'A remarkable novel...beautifully translated... Her voice, compassionate yet always shrewd, with its sharp portrait of France at war and during the optimistic and confused Twenties and early Thirties, is always distinctive' Literary Review

All Our Worldly Goods

Kurban Said

Ali Khan and Nino Kipiani live in the cosmopolitan, oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, is a melting-pot of different cultures. Ali is a Muslim, with his ancestors' passion for the desert, and Nino is a Christian Georgian girl with sophisticated European ways. Despite their differences, the two have loved each other since childhood and Ali is determined that he will marry Nino as soon as she leaves school. But there is not only the obstacle of their different religions and parental consent to overcome. The First World War breaks out. As the Russians withdraw, the Turks advance, and Ali and Nino find themselves swept up in Azerbaijan's fight for independence.

Ali And Nino

Carlene Bauer

It is not love at first sight for Frances and Bernard. 
 
She finds him faintly ridiculous while he sees her as aloof. But after that first meeting, Bernard writes Frances a letter which changes everything and soon they are immersed in the kind of fast, deep friendship that can alter the course of lives. They find their way to New York and discover cramped West Village kitchens, rowdy cocktail parties stocked with the sharp-witted and glamorous, taxis that can take you anywhere at all and long talks along the Hudson River as the lights of the Empire State Building blink on above. 
 
Irresistibly witty and deeply moving, Frances and Bernard is a story of kindred spirits and the people who help us discover who we are.

Frances and Bernard

Namwali Serpell

**Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020** 
 
 'The great African novel of the twenty-first century' Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater 
 
 On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. 
 
 In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles his fate with those of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. 
 
 So begins a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. 
 
 'Extraordinary, ambitious, evocative, dazzling' Salman Rushdie 
 
 'Brilliant . . . heartbreaking' Sunday Times 
 
 'Charming, heartbreaking and breathtaking' Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

The Old Drift

Tessa Hadley

As London comes alive with the new youth revolution, one woman makes a choice that defies all expectations. 
 
'Transporting' Meg Mason 
 
'Wonderful' Marian Keyes 
 
'My favourite author' Kate Atkinson 
 
'Achingly moving and real' Guardian 
 
'Beguiling' Hilary Mantel 
 
'Compelling' Elizabeth Day 
 
'Will bring you to tears' Daily Mail 
 
It's 1967 and London is alive with the new youth revolution. In the suburbs, meanwhile, Phyllis Fischer inhabits a world of conventional stability. Married with two children, her life is both comfortable and predictable. 
 
But when Nicky - a twenty-something friend of the family - visits one hot summer evening and kisses Phyllis in the dark of the garden, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations . . .

Free Love

Joy Rhoades

'A heart-breaking love story from a great new voice' Saga 
 
Australia 1945. Until now Kate Dowd has led a sheltered life on her family's sprawling sheep station but, with her father's health in decline, the management of the farm is increasingly falling to her. 
 
Kate is rising to the challenge when the arrival of two Italian POW labourers disrupts everything – especially when Kate finds herself drawn to the enigmatic Luca Canali. 
 
Then she receives devastating news. The farm is near bankrupt and the bank is set to repossess. Given just eight weeks to pay the debt, Kate is now in a race to save everything she holds dear.

The Woolgrower’s Companion

'A piercingly evocative East-West love story' The Times 
 
 
This is a story of East and West. A story of love, betrayal, and lost illusions... 
 
The end of the Cold War seems unimaginable for Milena, a Red Princess trapped in a lifetime of limitless luxury. 
 
Yet when she meets Jason, a confident British poet, it's not long before she's secretly planning her escape to Britain. 
 
1980s London defies her privileged expectations. And when she discovers Jason's concept of freedom confronts her deepest-held beliefs, the very ideas of family and state come into question... 
 
 
'A wonderful, perfectly-pitched novel: full of delightful intrigue and wry insight about the human predicament and its unique tensions' William Boyd 
 
'Witty, poignant and full of surprises - every detail of this cross-cultural story of love and disillusionment rings true' Clare Chambers

Iron Curtain

A Love Story

Lisa Stromme

Summer 1893. In a small Norwegian fishing village, local girl Johanne dutifully gathers berries for tourists and poses barefoot for painters as ‘The Strawberry Girl’. 
 
When Johanne becomes a maid for the wealthy Ihlen family, their wayward daughter recruits her as a go-between in her pursuit of the controversial painter Edvard Munch. But when she is asked to hide more than just secrets, Johanne must decide whether to take the risk…

The Strawberry Girl

Susan Choi

In 1955, a new student arrives at a small college in the Tennessee mountains. Chuck is shy, speaks English haltingly, and on the subject of his earlier life in Korea he will not speak at all. Then he meets Katherine, a beautiful and solitary young woman who, like Chuck, is haunted by a dark episode from the past. 
 
Without quite knowing why, these two outsiders are drawn together, each sensing in the other the possibility of salvation.

The Foreign Student

Elizabeth McCracken

‘Every so often a novel comes along which transcends whimsy with the beauty of its writing. Elizabeth McCracken's small masterpiece is one of these' Guardian 
 
A powerful and unique story about connection, showing that miracles can happen – even across a library circulation desk. 
 
The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-eight year old librarian Peggy Cort feels as if love and life have stood her up. That is, until the day James Carlson Sweatt – the 'over-tall' eleven year old boy who's the talk of the town – walks into her library and changes her life for ever. 
 
Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who's ever really understood her, and as he grows – six foot five at age twelve, then seven foot, then eight – so does their most singular romance. 
 
 *Perfect for readers who loved Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine*

The Giant's House

The bestselling classic from a 'magnificent story-teller' (Independent on Sunday). Journey to the glittering seventeenth-century court, and witness the rise and fall of young, charming Robert Merivel... 
 
When a twist of fate delivers an ambitious young medical student to the court of King Charles II, he is suddenly thrust into a vibrant world of luxury and opulence. Blessed with a quick wit and sparkling charm, Robert Merivel rises quickly, soon finding favour with the King, and privileged with a position as ‘paper groom’ to the youngest of the King’s mistresses. But by falling in love with her, Merivel transgresses the one rule that will cast him out from his new-found paradise… 
 
'For a vivid – and funny – fictional re-creation of the era, Tremain’s Restoration is hard to beat.' The Times 
 
Rose Tremain has sold over one million copies of her books.

Restoration

Sadie Jones

The intoxicating new novel from the number one bestselling author of The Outcast 
 
London 1972. Luke is dazzled by the city. It seems a world away from the provincial town he has fled along with his own troubled past, and his new life is unrecognisable – one of friendships forged in pubs, candlelit power cuts, and smoky late-night parties. 
 
 
When Nina, a fragile and damaged actress, strays into his path, Luke is immediately drawn to her and the delicate balance of his new life is threatened. Unable to stay away from her, Luke is torn between loyalty, desire and his own painful past, until everything he values, even the promise of the future, is in danger… 
 
Longlisted for the IMPAC Prize

Fallout

William Palmer

Working as a news photographer in 30s Berlin, Walther Klinger becomes - by a vicious twist of fate - a society photographer for the new aristocracy of the Nazi party. Walther's complicity makes him increasingly cynical and guilty, so that - for him - the coming of war is almost a relief. In a lonely Brittany farmhouse, just before the Allied invasion, Klinger meets Julia. They begin an affair and, against the background of the horrors and normalities of the Occupation, Walther attempts to make a refuge for himself and Julia. THE PARDON OF ST ANNE is about how he succeeds, triumphantly and tragically.

The Pardon Of St Anne

Arnost Lustig

It is September 1944; the war is going badly for the Germans, and they are in a hurry to complete their 'final solution'. Compromises are being made on all sides, conditions are unspeakable, rumours are rife, but nothing definite is known of the Nazis' intentions. 
 
On the outskirts of a concentration camp in northern Bohemia three people - two eighteen-year-old men and a desperately lost young woman, Leah - are thrown together, sharing their precarious existence in an attic room. While the world disintegrates around them their relationships are charged with passion, their days filled with erotic and spiritual attraction. Caught in the web of their relationships, their futures are uncertain and any choices they have left to make will be made in the face of almost certain death...

Waiting For Leah

Lee Langley

A richly imaginative novel of love, loss, time and the rise and fall of a great maritime empire, that sends two thwarted lovers spiralling through the chaos of history. 
 
The story begins in 1429 on Madeira, when a peasant girl meets a boy- a Jewish outsider- from a Portuguese sailing ship. Esperança and Emmanuel know they must part when the ship sails. From that first meeting and parting, others follow... 
 
Emmanuel is in turn sailor, mapmaker, bookseller, jazz musician; Esperança an illiterate peasant, a rich girl in Faro and a clever, bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. In twentieth-century London, Esperança is faced with a double incarnation, one of the true Emmanuel and the other a shadow. Over the centuries the couple face peril and tenderness. Each life is short. What survives is love.

Distant Music

John De Falbe

1864. After three years of service in the Russian navy and a gruelling expedition to Greenland, Captain Frederik Ziege of the Royal Danish Navy is enjoying a season on the Riviera with his mother, sister and two marriageable nieces. There he meets Emmeline Leslie, the young Australian widow of a bush pioneer. The differences between their complex histories enrich the ensuing romance, but frustrate their search for a home. The Bequest is a novel about identity and belonging, about the place of history and memory in uprooted lives and, at its heart it is the story of a passionate love affair.

The Bequest

Martin Amis

THE NOVEL THAT INSPIRED THE OSCAR WINNING FILM 
 
Amidst the horrors of Auschwitz, German officer, Angelus Thomsen, has found love. 
 
But unfortunately for Thomsen, the object of his affection is already married to his camp commandant, Paul Doll. 
 
As Thomsen and Doll&rsquo;s wife pursue their passion &ndash; the gears of Nazi Germany&rsquo;s Final Solution grinding around them &ndash; Doll is riven by suspicion. With his dignity in disrepute and his reputation on the line, Doll must take matters into his own hands and bring order back to the chaos that reigns around him. 
 
&lsquo;It is exceptionally brave&hellip;. Shakespearean&hellip;. It&rsquo;s exciting; it&rsquo;s alive; it&rsquo;s more than slightly mad. As the title suggests, it is dreadfully interesting.&rsquo; Sunday Times

The Zone of Interest

Anthony Quinn

Summer of 1911. English society is on the brink of change. The streets of London ring with cheers for a new king's coronation and the cries of increasingly violent suffragette protests. 
 
Connie Callaway, fired up by the possibilities of independence, wants more than the conventional comforts of marriage. Spirited and courageous, she is determined to fight for 'the greatest cause the world has ever known'. 
 
Will Maitland, the rising star of county cricket, is a man of traditional opinions. He is both intrigued and appalled by Connie's outspokenness and her quest for self-fulfilment. 
 
Their lives become inextricably entangled just as the outbreak of war drives them further apart. Buffeted and spun by choice and chance, Connie and Will struggle against the aftershocks of war and the changes it wreaks. This is a deeply affecting story of love against all the odds.

Half of the Human Race

Bethan Roberts

Discover the exquisitely told tragic tale of thwarted love behind the major new film adaptation 
 
It is in 1950s' Brighton that Marion first catches sight of the handsome and enigmatic Tom. He teaches her to swim in the shadow of the pier and Marion is smitten - determined her love will be enough for them both. 
 
A few years later in Brighton Museum Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world. 
 
Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed. 
 
'A sensitive, sweeping novel' VOGUE 
 
'A powerful story of forbidden love, regret, and living as your true self' VANITY FAIR 
 
'Tense, romantic, smart...I loved it. Devoured it!' RUSSELL T. DAVIES 
 
'A powerful story of love, shame and jealousy' MOHSIN ZAIDI

My Policeman

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