Len Deighton was born in 1929 in London. He did his national service in the RAF, went to the Royal College of Art and designed many book jackets, including the original UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The enormous success of his first spy novel, The IPCRESS File (1962), was repeated in a remarkable sequence of books over the following decades. These varied from historical fiction (Bomber, perhaps his greatest novel) to dystopian alternative fiction (SS-GB) and a number of brilliant non-fiction books on the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly). 
 
His spy novels chart the twists and turns of Britain and the Cold War in ways which now give them a unique flavour. They preserve a world in which Europe contains many dictatorships, in which the personal can be ruined by the ideological and where the horrors of the Second World War are buried under only a very thin layer of soil. Deighton's fascination with technology, his sense of humour and his brilliant evocation of time and place make him one of the key British espionage writers, alongside John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré.

Len Deighton

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Marian Keyes

Meet Anna Walsh. 
 
Lying in her parents' Good Front Room, covered in bandages, Anna dreams of leaving Dublin and returning to her beloved New York. 
 
To her home. To her job. And most of all to her husband Aidan. 
 
Unfortunately, her family have other ideas. She's staying put. And Aidan? He's refusing to even take her calls. 
 
The last thing Anna wants is to think about how she ended up in this mess. But with nothing else to do, she's forced to ask herself why she's thousands of miles from the life she loves. 
 
Where did it all go wrong? And can she fix it, before it's too late?

Anybody Out There

British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022

'How did it end up like this? Twenty-seven, unemployed, mistaken for a drug addict, in a treatment centre in the back arse of nowhere with an empty Valium bottle in my knickers . . .' 
 
Meet Rachel Walsh. She has a pair of size 8 feet and such a fondness for recreational drugs that her family has forked out the cash for a spell in Cloisters - Dublin's answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. She's only agreed to her incarceration because she's heard that rehab is wall-to-wall jacuzzis, gymnasiums and rock stars going tepid turkey - and it's about time she had a holiday. 
 
But what Rachel doesn't count on are the toe-curling embarrassments heaped on her by family and group therapy, the dearth of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll - and missing Luke, her ex. What kind of a new start in life is this?

Rachel's Holiday

Anna had a dream life - according to everybody else. 
She lived in New York, had a long-term boyfriend, and had The Best Job In The World working as a highly successful beauty PR. 
So why did she decide to take a flamethrower to the lot? 
Because now she's back Dublin, living with her parents. She's undeniably forty-eight, with no partner, no job, and no direction. 
Anna's lost her purpose. She needs a new challenge to help her fall back in love with life again. 
When an opportunity arises to solve a PR crisis in the tiny town of Maumtully, Anna leaps at the chance. 
But will the appearance of an old love interest derail her plans?

My Favourite Mistake

"I employ this thing called The Shovel List." 
"A shovel...?" 
"No. A Shovel List. It's more of a conceptual thing. It's a list of all the people and things I hate so much that I want to hit them in the face with a shovel." 
 
Helen Walsh doesn't believe in fear - it's just a thing invented by men to get all the money and good jobs - and yet she's sinking. Her work as a Private Investigator has dried up, her flat has been repossessed and now some old demons have resurfaced. 
 
Not least in the form of her charming but dodgy ex-boyfriend Jay Parker, who shows up with a missing persons case - the target: Wayne Diffney, the 'Wacky One' from boyband Laddz.. 
 
Playing by her own rules, Helen is drawn into a dark and glamorous world, where her worst enemy is her own head and where increasingly the only person she feels connected to is Wayne, a man she's never even met. 
 
Utterly compelling, moving and very very funny, The Mystery of Mercy Close is unlike any novel you've ever read and Helen Walsh - courageous, vulnerable and wasp-tongued - is the perfect heroine for our times.

The Mystery of Mercy Close

From the author of the 2023 Sunday Times bestseller Again, Rachel

Back in the long ago nineties, Rachel Walsh was a mess. 
 
But a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers. 
 
But with the sudden reappearance of a man she'd once loved, her life wobbles. 
 
She'd thought she was settled. Fixed forever. Is she about to discover that no matter what our age, everything can change? 
 
Is it time to think again, Rachel?

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