Nigella Lawson has written eleven bestselling cookery books including the classics How to Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess – the book that inspired a whole new generation of bakers. These books, and her TV series, have made her a household name around the world. 
 
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Nigella Lawson

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Mary Lawson

**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO FOUR** 
 
Set in the frozen north of Canada in 1972, this is a novel of painful histories and the moments in life when we can change for the better. 
 
Clara's rebellious older sister is missing. Grief-stricken and bewildered, she yearns to uncover the truth about what happened. 
 
Liam, newly divorced and newly unemployed, moves into the house next door and within hours gets a visit from the police. 
 
Elizabeth is thinking about a crime committed thirty years ago, one that had tragic consequences for two families. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies. 
 
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE** 
 
'I've been telling everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler 
 
'Close to perfection' The Times 
 
'Exquisitely poignant' Liane Moriarty

A Town Called Solace

Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips's first novel tells the story of Leila, a nineteen-year-old woman living on a small Caribbean island in the 1950s. Unsatisfied with life on the island, Leila decides to leave her friends and follow her mother overseas, taking her restless husband Michael and her young son with her. Her subsequent passage to England brings her face to face with the consequences of the decisions she has made to determine her life on her own terms.

Final Passage

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

A. S. Byatt

In Yorkshire, the Potter family are preparing to celebrate Elizabeth II’s arrival on the throne. Its three youngest members, however, are preoccupied with other matters. Stephanie has grown tired of their overbearing father and resolves to marry the local curate. Anxious teenager Marcus gains a new teacher and suffers increasingly disturbing visions. Then there is Frederica. On the brink of adulthood, a love affair with a young playwright may offer the freedom she desperately desires. 
 
THE FIRST FREDERICA POTTER NOVEL

The Virgin in the Garden

Anthony Quinn

'Powered by a satisfactorily pacy plot and oiled by Quinn’s effortless prose, this is a book that slips down as easily as a gin-and-it' Guardian 
 
Summer, 1967. As London shimmers in a heat haze and swoons to the sound of Sergeant Pepper, a mystery film – Eureka – is being shot by German wunderkind Reiner Werther Kloss. 
 
The screenwriter, Nat Fane, would do anything for a hit but can’t see straight for all the acid he’s dropping. Fledgling actress Billie Cantrip is hoping for her big break but can’t find a way out of her troubled relationship with an older man. And journalist Freya Wyley wants to know why so much of what Kloss touches turns to ash in his wake.

Eureka

Peter Ackroyd

Three Brothers follows the fortunes of Harry, Daniel and Sam Hanway, born on a post-war council estate in Camden Town. Marked out from the start by curious coincidence, each boy is forced to make his own way in the world – a world of dodgy deals and big business, of criminal gangs and crooked landlords, of newspaper magnates, back-biters and petty thieves. 
 
London is the backdrop and the connecting fabric of these three lives, reinforcing Ackroyd’s grand theme that place and history create, surround and engulf us. From bustling, cut-throat Fleet Street to hallowed London publishing houses, from the wealth and corruption of Chelsea to the smoky shadows of Limehouse and Hackney, this is an exploration of the city, peering down its streets, riding on its underground, and drinking in its pubs and clubs. Everything is possible – not only in the new freedom of the 1960s but also in London’s timeless past.

Three Brothers

Vesna Goldsworthy

'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

Lauren Owen

You are about to discover the secrets of The Quick – 
 
But first, reader, you must travel to Victorian England, and there, in the wilds of Yorkshire, meet a brother and sister alone in the world, a pair bound by tragedy. You will, in time, enter the rooms of London’s mysterious Aegolius Club – a society of the richest, most powerful men in England. And at some point – we cannot say when – these worlds will collide. 
 
It is then, and only then, that a new world emerges, a world of romance, adventure and the most delicious of horrors – and the secrets of The Quick are revealed. 
 
'Sly and glittering' Hilary Mantel 
 
'Impossible to resist' Kate Atkinson

The Quick

Sara Stockbridge

Grace Hammer lives a sweet enough life with her four children in London's dank and dirty East End, dipping into the pockets of wealthy strangers foolish enough to venture there. She keeps a clean house and a tight hold on her magpie nature, restricting her interests to wallets and pocket watches - at night she dreams of shiny things. Unbeknown to Grace, her most audacious crime will soon return to haunt her and old enemies come knocking. 
 
Out in the dark countryside Mr Blunt rocks in his chair, grinding his teeth, vowing furious retribution. He has never forgotten his scarlet treasure, or the harlot that stole it from him. At night he dreams of slitting her lily-white throat...

The Fortunes of Grace Hammer

A Tale of the Victorian Underworld

Discover this powerful novel about a family falling apart, from the Booker Longlisted author of A TOWN CALLED SOLACE 
 
'Tender and surprising... A vivid and evocative tale' New York Times 
 
Twenty-one-year-old Megan Cartwright has never been outside the small town she was born in but one winter's day in 1966 she leaves everything behind and sets out for London. Ahead of her is a glittering new life, just waiting for her to claim it. 
 
But left behind, her family begins to unravel. Disturbing letters from home begin to arrive and torn between her independence and family ties, Megan must make an impossible choice. 
 
'Every bit as good as I expected. A heart-aching and beautifully written story of a family falling apart' Woman and Home

Road Ends

'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

After her husband becomes violent, Frederica Potter flees with her young son to London. There, she secures a teaching position in an art school, and finds herself surrounded by painters and poets with dreams of rebellion. Then Frederica meets Jude Mason, the strange and charismatic author of a wildly controversial novel. When her husband files for divorce and Jude becomes the target of a high-profile court case, Frederica’s life threatens to spiral out of control. 
 
THE THIRD FREDERICA POTTER NOVEL

Babel Tower

Frederica Potter arrives at Cambridge University greedy for knowledge, sex and love. It isn’t long before she becomes infatuated with a mysterious and controlling poet. Back in Yorkshire, her sister Stephanie abandons academia and is confronted with the boredom and frustrations of motherhood. Meanwhile, their younger brother Marcus begins to recover from a nervous breakdown. Each sibling is desperate to shape their own future, but a horrifying event will soon change their lives forever.

Still Life

Famous author Olive Wellwood writes a special private book, bound in different colours, for each of her children. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets. 
 
They grow up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, but as the sons rebel against their parents and the girls dream of independent futures, they are unaware that in the darkness ahead they will be betrayed unintentionally by the adults who love them. This is the children's book.

The Children's Book

Wesley Stace

Lord Loveall, heretofore heirless lord of the sprawling Love Hall, is the richest man in England. He arrives home one morning with a most unusual package - a baby that he presents as the inheritor to the family name and fortune. In honor of his beloved sister, who died young, Loveall names the baby Rose. The household, relieved at the continuation of the Loveall line, ignores the fact that this Rose has a thorn...that she is, in fact, a boy. 
 
Rose grows up with the two servant children who are her only friends, blissfully unaware of her own gender, casually hitting boundaries at Love Hall's yearly cricket game and learning to shave even as she continues to wear more and more elaborate dresses. Until, of course, the fateful day when Rose's world comes crashing down around her, and she is banished from Love Hall as an impostor by those who would claim her place as heir.

Misfortune

William Palmer

Opening in 1939, this novel spans 50 years and depicts the central character's life as a political emigre in a run down part of London. He is invited to return to his home city by the renascent nationalist movement where he learns the price of remaining an "innocent" in history.

The Good Republic

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

Maureen Duffy

Wounds begins with two lovers in bed. Their lovemaking throughout the book forms a recurring lietmotif, a counterpoint to the examination of the spiritual death of the characters. 
 
In a South London environment of pub and fairground, home and work, the wounds of 20th century experience are evoked in prose which is both lyrical and precise. Kingy in her garden, ‘loved by the most handsome women in the world’; Maura the barmaid: ‘I prefer the little, thin men'; Glisten the Mayor: ‘It’ll be take-over time and too late’ — these and the many other characters illustrate the basic theme of the novel.

Wounds

Soazig Aaron

When Klara appears in Paris, two months after the end of the war and years after her disappearance into Auschwitz, her best friend and sister-in-law, Angélika, is elated, if apprehensive. Initially, her fears seem well founded - Klara won't eat, nor will she acknowledge the daughter she has left behind. Gradually, Klara reveals with cold anger and pitiless lucidity, the full extent of what she experienced in Auschwitz as she struggles to readapt to normal life. 
 
 
Not since Sophie's Choice has a novelist succeeded in conveying - with truth, dignity, power and intelligence - the inhumanity of the death camps and the scars suffered by those who survived them. Refusal is a compelling, elegant and often heart-breaking glimpse into life beyond the horror.

Refusal

Alon Hilu

The year is 1895, Jaffa. Salah Rajani, a troubled Muslim boy living in a dilapidated mansion surrounded by orange groves, suffers from peculiar visions about a disaster which is set to befall his people. His life is changed by the arrival of a handsome young man, a dynamic Jewish settler, new to the city, by the name of Isaac Luminsky. Luminsky covets both the fertile lands of the Rajani estate and Salah's beautiful mother Afifa, and his friendship with the boy is destined to lead to violence and tragedy. 
 
This rich and colourful novel is made up of the two opposing journals of Hilu's intriguing and extraordinary protagonists as they negotiate love, honour and betrayal in the changing world of nineteenth-century Palestine.

The House of Rajani

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

Gerard Woodward

It is 1970 in the suburbs of north London and, from the untidy comfort of her crowded house, Colette Jones is watching her older brother go to pieces, drinking himself into oblivion on home-made wine. Colette knows the solace a drink can provide, being partial to an evening at the Red Lion herself. But soon she finds she cannot afford to ignore the destructive effect that alcohol is having on her family, and with gritted teeth Colette is forced to exile the alcoholic son she loves so much from the house. But this act takes its toll and, just as she can't resist a drink, so she can't resist allowing Janus back into her life - with heartbreaking consequences for everyone. 
 
Gerard Woodward's magnificent second novel continues the story of the Joneses, so memorably introduced in August. By way of an odyssey through the pubs, parks and shopping parades of suburban London, it lurches from farce to tragedy as the members of one unforgettable family build and destroy their lives.

I'll Go To Bed At Noon

Anne Tyler

The glorious Sunday Times bestseller follows one family's joys and heartbreaks, mistakes and secrets, from the 1950s right up to today 
 
When Mercy Garrett moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. 
 
All she wants is space and silence. No clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. 
 
But it turns out family life is impossible to escape - particularly when it's in your past. For Mercy it all begins in 1959, with a holiday to a cabin by a lake. It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations 
 
 
'Gorgeous, charming, profound, and written with such lightness of touch' MARIAN KEYES 
 
'A perfect work of fiction' MEG MASON 
 
'She is and always will be my favourite author' LIANE MORIARTY 
 
'Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life' RACHEL JOYCE 
 
'Anne Tyler really is the best... Her sheer brilliance makes it all seems so effortless' GRAHAM NORTON 
 
'A faultless novel, effortlessly profound. I read it in two sittings, totally immersed' VICTORIA HISLOP 
 
 
 
 
French Braid appeared in the Sunday Times bestseller list on on 03.04.2022, 10.04.2022 and 17.04.2022

French Braid

Michel Houellebecq

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2020 
 
A powerful criticism of modern life by one of the most provocative and prophetic writers of our age 
 
Florent-Claude Labrouste is dying of sadness. Despised by his girlfriend and on the brink of career failure, his last hope for relief comes in the form of a newly available antidepressant that alters the brain's release of serotonin. 
 
When he returns to the Normandy countryside in search of serenity, he instead finds a rural community left behind by globalisation and red-tape agricultural policies, with local farmers longing for an impossible return towhat they remember as a golden age. 
 
'Despite its provocations, this is a novel of romantic and sorrowful ideas: Houellebecq as troubadour, singing lost loves' Rachel Kushner 
 
Michel Houellebecq has good claim to be the most interesting novelist of our times. . . Exhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable' Evening Standard

Serotonin

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

V. C. Letemendia

This second thrilling novel featuring Laurence Beaumont, the seductive, sardonic protagonist introduced in The Best of Men, blends history and fiction in a seventeenth century alive with intrigue, passion, violence and wit, from the embattled court of King Charles I at Oxford where poisonous rivalries fester, to stately country estates and the colourful underworld of thieves and whores. 
 
1643: England is descending into a bloodier Civil War, and Beaumont, born a nobleman's heir but with a shadowy past as a mercenary turncoat and spy, has been hired against his will as agent to the King's new Secretary of State, the manipulative Lord Digby. 
 
Still in love with the bewitching Isabella Savage, Beaumont is sent by Digby into enemy-held London to track down his counterpart, Parliament's twisted spymaster, who nourishes his own, very personal desire for revenge. Already Beaumont suspects he can trust no one, not even Isabella, who has deep ties to Digby. As power struggles seethe within the Royalist camp and Beaumont's tenuous faith in the King's cause is further eroded, he becomes haunted by nightmares portending two deaths: of the King, and of the Prince of Wales, for whom Beaumont cherishes a strong, protective bond. 
 
At home, as his father's health weakens, Beaumont's duty is to choose a respectable wife and carry on the ancient line, though to give up Isabella will devastate him. Worse yet, a visitor from his mother's Spanish past appears with a long-buried secret that could ultimately destroy the Beaumont family.

The Licence of War

Elizabeth McCracken

‘A big, glorious novel in every sense, this sprawling family saga…is a funny and big-hearted epic from a seriously gifted wordsmith’ 
Marie Claire 
 
Read the sweeping and enchanting new novel from the author of The Giant’s House 
 
Bertha is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts – ever since she was discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery with nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin and fifteen pounds of gold on her person. She has no past to speak of, and her mysterious origin scandalises the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. 
 
But Bertha is plucky and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark. As she changes the town forever, her singular spirit resonating through every board and brick and bone, an epic family saga unfolds, set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America.

Bowlaway

Janette Jenkins

It's 1899 and a young girl is abandoned in London by her feckless family. She finds lodging and work assisting a doctor. But Jane Stretch is no ordinary girl, and Mr Swift is no ordinary doctor. 
 
Jane does her best to keep up with the doctor, her twisted bones throbbing, as they hurry past the markets, stage doors and side shows to appointments in certain boarding houses across town. The young actresses who live there have problems, and Mr Swift does what is required, calmly and discreetly. Grateful to her benefactor and his wife, Jane assists him and asks no questions - the desperate women not minding that it is a cripple girl who wipes their brows. 
 
When this unlikely pair becomes involved with Johnny Treble, a rakish music hall star, and the police come knocking, it seems that Jane's spell of good fortune is unlikely to last...

Little Bones

Elaine di Rollo

Monty and Ada last saw one another on the frontlines of the First World War, when Monty was a nurse and Ada an ambulance driver who drove like the devil. Now, the two friends have been reunited at crumbling Bleakly Hall, where Monty has been hired to look after the grumpy, gouty guests who have come to take the Hall's curative waters. 
 
But the end of the Great War has brought changes for everyone at Bleakly, and not all of them are good. Monty, mourning the death of her beloved Sophia, has a score to settle with the elusive Captain Foxley; Ada misses her wartime sense of purpose; the Blackwood brothers must reinvent Bleakly for a new era; while Foxley has his own ways of keeping his demons at bay.

Bleakly Hall

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE** 
 
'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon...' 
 
This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer's day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. 
 
From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. From Red's father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red's grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century - four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home... 
 
**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

A Spool of Blue Thread

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