A merchant seaman is the sole survivor when his ship is sunk in a battle in the South Pacific. Badly burned, he is stripped of every shred of identity and cast into the sea, naked, faceless, nameless. Rescued and lying in a Pearl Harbor hospital, he is mistakenly identified as the missing Lt. Ben Davenant by Davenant's wife. In the moment, the man decides to go along, to take on Davenant's identity, to return with her to California and take on his life.Mortal Leap may remind some r...

WINNER OF THE THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2019**'**The book everyone is talking about' The Times'A comedy for our times' Guardian__________________The country is changing and, up and down the land, cracks are appearing - within families and between generations.In the Midlands Benjamin Trotter is trying to help his aged father navigate a Britain that seems to have forgotten he exists, whils...

A wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government by the prize-winning author of Bournvlile.It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year:Newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't. Henry's turning hospitals into car parks. Roddy's selling art in return for sex. Down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock. Thomas is making a killing on the stock ...

A STUNNING, HEARTFELT NEW NOVEL ABOUT A DECADES-LONG FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN TWO COMPOSERS FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE, BOURNVILLE AND MIDDLE ENGLANDThe year is 1907 and Maurice Ravel is one of the most admired young composers in France. In Belle Epoque Paris he cuts a charismatic, dandyish figure, whose technically flawless music hides a deep emotional core, and whose unpredictable talent is as hard to pin down as his my...

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Middle England turns his gaze to one of cinema's most intriguing figures - famed director of Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder.***SOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM***In the summer of 1977, naïve Calista Frangopoulou sets out to venture into the world. On a Greek island that has been turned into a film set, she finds herself working for Billy Wilder, about whom she knows almost n...

WINNER OF THE EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE__________Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, first love, corrosive class warfare, detention, IRA bombings.Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school.Unforgettably funny and painfully honest,...

'Terrific. An incisive portrait of Britain at the turn of the century' SPECTATOR'Coe's finest achievement since What a Carve up!' TIME OUT**'Popular fiction at its best' DAILY MAILDiscover bestselling author Jonathan Coe's hilarious sequel to The Rotters' Club!**It's the end of the century and Benjamin Trotter and friends are all grown up.Life is a ceaseless whirl of jobs, marriage...

This is a novel about the hundreds of tiny connections between the public and private worlds and how they affect us all.It's about the legacy of war and the end of innocence.It's about how comedy and politics are battling it out and comedy might have won.It's about how 140 characters can make fools of us all.It's about living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street.It is Jona...

**'My comfort read: anything by Jonathan Coe' Bob Mortimer'Coe channels his anger and frustration at the direction his country has taken, as well as his abiding love for it, into prose of enduring beauty' Guardian---**Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly, living with her parents and working a zero-hours contract at Heathrow Airport, while her budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere.That is, until family friend Chri...

Expo 58 - Good-looking girls and sinister spies: a naive Englishman at loose in Europe in Jonathan Coe's brilliant comic novelLondon, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk at the Central Office of Information and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels. His task: to keep an eye on The Brittania, a brand new pub which will form the heart of the British presence at Expo 58 - the biggest World's Fair of the century, and the first t...

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its fourteenth yearInspired by Giles Gordon and David Hughes's Best Short Stories series, which ran to ten volumes between 1986 and 1995, Best British Short Stories this year reaches its fourteenth volume.Best British Short Stories 2024 showcases an excellent and varied selection of stories, by British writers, first published during 2023 in magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks and online.

The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe's heartbreaking novel of family secretsDeeply moving and compelling, The Rain Before it Falls is the story of three generations of one family riven by tragedy. When Rosamund, a reluctant bearer of family secrets, dies suddenly, a mystery is left for her niece Gill to unravel. Some photograph albums and tapes point towards a blind girl named Imogen whom no one has seen in twenty years. The search for Imogen and the truth of h...