Seb's beautiful, beloved wife Leda has been killed by a swan. Sorting through her belongings after her death, he comes across a packet of unopened letters from Olaf, a man whom Leda had never mentioned. Floundering professionally and sunk by grief, he decides to travel to Leda's home village in Latvia to patch her story together. But with each new person that he turns to for answers, Seb is met instead by more questions about Leda, her past and their life together.A darkly funny, s...

Seb's beautiful, beloved wife Leda has been killed by a swan. With a name like that, with a bizarre family history like hers, it isn't really surprising. Seb has a grip on her story and its aesthetics; he knows how it should go. Except that he doesn't. Sorting through her belongings after her death, he comes across a packet of unopened letters from a man whom Leda has never mentioned. It is a loose detail in the thread of his narrative that, when pulled, unravels the whole story of his mar...

Tucked away along a shady path towards the north-east edge of Hampstead Heath is a sign: Women Only. This is the Kenwood Ladies' Bathing Pond.Floating in the Pond's silky waters, hidden by a canopy of trees, it's easy to forget that you are in the middle of London. On a hot day, thousands of swimmers from eight to eighty-plus can be found waiting to take a dip before sunbathing in the adjoining meadow. As summer turns to autumn and then winter, the Pond is still visited by a large ...

Part One of SEASON OF DESIRE, a fiercely passionate five-part serial novel by Sadie Matthews which will excite all fans of FIRE AFTER DARK, BECAUSE YOU ARE MINE and FIFTY SHADES OF GREY.Freya Hammond is used to people fulfilling her every whim. Wealthy and spoiled, she lives a butterfly existence of fashion and parties and is accustomed to getting her own way. Which is why the new bodyguard is riling her. Miles Murray is ex-SAS and obeys her instructions with barely...

We all have secret lives. And we are all pretty good at keeping them secret.With simplicity and great beauty, Currawalli Street reveals the echoes between past and present through the story of one ordinary street and its families, from the pre-war innocence of early 1914 to the painful and grim consequences of the Vietnam War.In 1914, Thomas, the young rector, questions his faith and falls in love; his sister Janet, a dutiful spinster, hides a surprising s...

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Prophet Song, a sweeping, Dickensian story of a young girl on a life-changing journey across nineteenth-century Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine.Early one October morning, Grace's mother snatches her from sleep and brutally cuts off her hair, declaring, "You are the strong one now." With winter close at hand and Ireland already suffering, Grace is no longer safe at home. And so her mother outfits her in men's c...

Beautifully written and bitingly funny, Charlotte Mendelson's prize-winning Daughters of Jerusalem is a gripping novel of hidden love and hate, of the desire to belong, and the need for escape.Amidst the crumbling yellow stone of Oxford and its prestigious university, secrets are stirring within the Lux family home . . .Jean, the constrained and guilt-ridden wife of an academic, is waiting for excitement – and it will come from an unexpected source...

'She turns her head and smiles. Something is wrong with her face. The bones have been recarved. Her lips are thin and her nose is a dark blade. Teeth small and yellow. The lashes of her hazel eyes have thickened and her brows are drawn together, an expression he has never seen, a look that is almost craven.'Mrs Fox is the story of a husband who is shocked out of his complacency when his wife undergoes a remarkable transformation."The poetic use of language, the dexterity an...

A serial killer with all the time in the world...Stephen Killigan has been cold since the day he arrived in Cambridge. Seven hundred years of history staining the stones of the university have given him a chill he can't shake. Then he stumbles across the body of a missing beauty queen - a body which disappears before the police arrive...Unwittingly, Killigan has entered the sinister world of Jackamore Grass on a trail that reaches back to seventeenth-centur...

Otto Laird is outraged . . .The peaceful, if slightly bemused, existence of this elderly, retired architect is rudely interrupted when he learns that his most significant and revolutionary building, Marlowe House, a 1960s tower block council estate in south London is to be demolished. Determined to do everything in his power to save the building, Otto returns to London for the first time in twenty-five years.As he explores his past, ponders his pre...

_______________'Beautifully describes the landscape of the Sussex coast, echoing with battles, buried bodies and Nora the protagonist's running shoes as she finds her own way of working through the knots of her life and those close to her' - Readers' Books of the Year, Guardian'Rusbridge's sympathetic and respectful handling of a sensitive issue conveys an emotional impact that resonates long after the closing pages'

In her first ever story collection, Jansson revealed the clarity of vision and light philosophical touch that were to become her hallmark. From the good listener who begins to betray the secrets confided to her, to vignettes of a city storm or the slow halting of spring, these stories are gifts of originality and depth.