Toby Withers, a young man with epilepsy, leaves New Zealand after the death of his mother. While on board a ship to England, he meets Zoe, a middle-aged woman looking for a life of meaning and Pat, an Irishman who claims to have many friends but treats people with carelessness. Alike in their alienation, all three embark on a new life in London, piecing together an existence in the margins of the urban world. The Edge of the Alphabet, the third novel by Janet Frame, one of New Zealand's fo...

In A State of Siege, Janet Frame brings her signature playfulness to paint a thrilling psychological portrait. After the death of her invalid mother, Malfred Signal, a retired New Zealand art teacher, leaves her birthplace in the south for a beach cottage on a sub-tropical island in the north. Freed from endless lessons on still life and the dominating presence of her family, she hopes at last to be alone with nature and the 'room two inches behind the eyes'. But the solitude she ...

'One of the most impressive accounts of madness to be found in literature' ANITA BROOKNER'Lyrical, touching and deeply entertaining' JOHN MORTIMER, OBSERVER'Any one of her books could be published today and it would be ground-breaking' ELEANOR CATTON'I was now an established citizen with little hope of returning across the frontier; I was in the crazy world, separated now by more than locked doors and b...

'Janet Frame's luminous words are the more precious because they were snatched from the jaws of the disaster of her early life. It is one of the classics of autobiography. She knew that a writer must search her soul in order to say anything that is essential' HILARY MANTEL'Janet Frame is the greatest New Zealand writer. She is utterly herself. Any one of her books could be published today and it would be ground-breaking' ELEANOR CATTONAfter...

'All I had experienced, all the stories I had read or dreamed came to me the moment I, a stranger, turned the key in the lock of the unknown house.'In a sweltering basement in downtown Baltimore, Mavis Halleton, writer, ventriloquist and gossip, is struggling to write her novel when an unexpected invitation arrives. The Garretts, a couple Mavis has never heard of but who admire her work, are to spend time in Italy and offer the use of their airy home in the Berkeley hills....

'Frame achieved that supremely difficult task of finding a voice so natural' JANE CAMPION, GUARDIAN'The idea of a new novel by Janet Frame is in itself a delight' MAGGIE O'FARRELL'She is a singular writer. No one is quite like her' ELEANOR CATTONThe Daylight and the Dust is the most comprehensive selection of Janet Frame's stories ever published, taken from the four different collections released d...

'A deeply rewarding and beautiful novel' HILARY MANTEL, GUARDIAN' Towards Another Summer is a joy to read' MAGGIE O'FARRELL'Frame has been compared with Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf' TELEGRAPHLife in England seems transitory for Grace Cleave as the pull of her native New Zealand grows stronger. She begins to feel increasingly like a migratory bird. Grace longs to find her own pla...

'Janet Frame was a unique and troubled soul whose luminous words are the more precious' HILARY MANTEL'Her dark, eloquent song captured my heart' JANE CAMPION'All my preoccupations as a writer - my notions of home, beauty, madness of sorts and longing - come from her' MEG MASONThere is nothing in the world the matter with me, except that I have been bathed in a trough and dipped under a waterfall and the pine-needl...

Grace, the protagonist, is taking a break from writing a long novel and seems to be losing her grip on daily life in London. She feels more and more like a migratory bird as the pull of her native New Zealand makes life in England seem transitory. The desire to leave behind the social human agonies of appearing neither too clever nor too stupid, too helpful or too lazy, becomes overwhelming for Grace. Frame's observational prowess is apparent in Towards Another Summer in the vivid and hear...

Owls Do Cry is Janet Frame's first novel. She describes her idea behind it in the second volume of her autobiography: 'Pictures of great treasure in the midst of sadness and waste haunted me and I began to think, in fiction, of a childhood, home life, hospital life, using people known to me as a base for main characters, and inventing minor characters.' Regarded by many as one of the best New Zealand novels published, Owls Do Cry forms a loose trilogy with her two subsequent novels, Faces ...

Harry Gill, a moderately successful writer of historical fiction, has been awarded the annual Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship – a 'living memorial' to the poet, Margaret Rose Hurndell. He arrives in the small French village of Menton, where Hurndell once lived and worked, to write. But the Memorial Room is not suitable – it has no electricity or water. Hurndell never wrote here, though it is expected of Harry. Janet Frame's previously unpublished novel draws on her own experiences in Mento...

Witty, heartbreaking, shocking, satirical: the short story can excite or sadden, entice or repulse. The one thing it can never be is dull. Now Victoria Hislop, passionate ambassador for the art of the short story, has collected 100 stories from her favourite women writers into one volume.Here are Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates, well-known feminists and famous wits, national treasures and rising stars. All handpicked by one of the nation's best-loved novelists, there's...