GAFFNEY, David Never Never This darkly humorous debut novel from an acclaimed short-story writer delves deeply into today's debt culture. Eric works as a debt counsellor in Cumbria. It's ironic, then, that he is deeply in the red. Adding to the complications of his life are his affair with Julie and the strange, cryptic postcards he's been receiving.
GAFFNEY, David The Half Life of Songs This is David Gaffney’s latest collection of micro stories. We see a world where thinking is illegal, belly dancers’ blood is used to fertilize tomato plants, pensioners in leather trousers dance to two-step garage, and an architect steals crested newts and hides them in his bath.
GALE, Patrick Notes from an Exhibition When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind an extraordinary and acclaimed body of work - but she also leaves a legacy of secrets and emotional damage that will take months to unravel.
GALE, Patrick A Perfectly Good Man When 20-year-old Lenny Barnes, paralysed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in the presence of Barnaby Johnson, the much-loved priest of a West Cornwall parish, the tragedy's reverberations open up the fault lines between Barnaby and his nearest and dearest.
GALLOWAY, Steven The Cellist of Sarajevo Tense and heartbreaking to its last page, 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' shows how life under siege creates impossible moral choices. When the everyday act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude - and frailty.
GALSWORTHY, John The Forsyte Saga Charting the Forsyte dynasty from a thriving existence at the height of the Edwardian era through turbulent transition into the modern age, this novel paints a fascinating picture of early 20th century London life.
GARDAM, Jane Old Filth Long ago, Old Filth was a Raj orphan - one of the many young children sent 'home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England. This novel tells his story, from his birth in what was then Malaya to the extremities of his old age.
GASKELL, Elizabeth North and South Set in the context of Victorian social and medical debate, this novel is about rebellion, posing fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. This revised edition draws on recent theoretical work on gender and class.
GASKELL, Elizabeth Cranford In this poignant comedy of early Victorian life, Elizabeth Gaskell explores the effects of Victorian commerce and imperial expansion on the survival of customs from earlier times.
GASKELL, Elizabeth Cousin Philips A beautifully controlled and haunting novella, 'Cousin Philips' is considered to be among the very best of Gaskell's shorter writings. In it she explores the tragedy of unfulfilled love to create a work of exquisite poignancy.
GASKELL, Elizabeth Wives and Daughters Elizabeth Gaskell's brilliant study of English social customs is a novel that explores the relationship between two stepsisters who form an instant friendship that is put to the test when they become rivals in love.
GEDO, Fabio Ten-year-old Enaiatollah has been left alone in Pakistan to fend for himself. In a book based on a true story, Italian novelist Fabio Geda describes Enaiatollah's remarkable five-year journey from Afghanistan to Italy, where he finally managed to claim political asylum.
GEE, M Autumn Kill This fast-paced crime thriller begins with the murder of two advertising executives in London. A dark secret is uncovered...what will the consequences be?
GEE, Sue Reading in Bed Opening at the Hay Festival, and ending with the prospect of a spring wedding, this novel is a lively story of tangled relationships and the sustaining powers of good books, loyal friends and conversation.
GEE, Sue Last Fling This is the first short story collection from an acclaimed novelist with a wide and loyal readership. Many of the stories have won prizes, been published or broadcast; some are new, written especially for the collection. Several feature artists, and are set in the past in a rural England; others are contemporary.
GENOVA, Lisa Still Alice Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. A Harvard professor, she has a successful husband and three grown children. She soon finds herself in the rapidly downward spiral of Alzheimer's Disease. Her short-term memory may be hanging on by a couple of frayed threads, but she is still Alice.
GERAS, Adele and others War Girls 1914: war has broken out across Europe and beyond. Nothing will ever be the same again for those caught up in the conflict. This collection of short stories explores how the First World War changed and shaped the lives of women forever.
GHOSH, Amitav The Glass Palace Rajkumar helps on a market stall outside the royal palace when the British force the royal family into exile. Rescued by a Chinese merchant they move to upper Burma but he is haunted by his vision of the royal family and journeys to find them.
GHOSH, Amitav Sea of Poppies The background to this historical adventure is the Opium Wars. The story revolves around the Ibis, an old slaving-ship voyaging across the Indian Ocean, its crew made up of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts, representing Westerners and Indians respectively. Slowly they start considering themselves as ship-brothers.
GIBBONS, Stella Cold Comfort Farm When expensively educated Flora Poste is orphaned, she decides to descend on her relatives at Cold Comfort Farm, and put their lives in order. This is a popular comic classic, recently made into a BBC TV film.
GLADWELL, Malcolm Outliers Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an extreme overachiever.
GOLDEN, Arthur Memoirs of a Geisha This seductive and evocative epic tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. It reveals the cruelty and ugliness of life behind the rice-paper screens, and summons up more than 20 years of Japan's most dramatic history.
GOODWIN, Daisy Essential Poems for Children Britain's anthologiser of poetry turns her discerning eye on the nation's infants, with a wonderful collection of poems, together with typically acute commentary, for reading aloud to younger children or for older ones to browse through.
GOODWIN, Daisy My Last Duchess Beautiful Cora Cash, the wealthiest debutante in America, is spirited away from the glamour & comfort of her Park Avenue mansion & suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, mistress of Lulworth Castle, maried to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. As Cora is soon to discover, nothing in this strange new world is quite as it seems.
GRAHAM, Laurie Gone with the Windsors The fictional diary of the Queen’s best friend in pre-war London.
GRANT, Richard There are many ways to die in the Sierra Madre, a notorious 900-mile mountain range in northern Mexico where AK-47s are fetish objects, the law is almost non-existent and power lies in the hands of brutal drug mafias. 'Bandit Roads' is Richard Grant's account of his dangerous journey through the hostile region.
GRAVES, Robert Goodbye to all that 'Goodbye to all That' is Robert Graves' marvellously candid self-portrait of his childhood and his experiences as a young officer in the First World War.
GREEN, John The Faults in our Stars Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
GREER, Germaine Shakespeare’s Wife This is a biography of Ann Hathaway and a social history of Shakespeare's time by the redoubtable Germaine Greer.
GREGORY, Philippa The Constant Princess Splendid and sumptuous historical novel from Philippa Gregory, telling of the early life of Katherine of Aragon. We think of her as the barren wife of a notorious king; but behind this legacy lies a fascinating story.
GREGORY, Phillipa The White Queen The White Queen' tells the tale of one woman's ambitious ascent to royalty during the Wars of the Roses and the unsolved mystery around her sons' imprisonment in the Tower.
GREGORY, Phillipa The Red Queen The Red Queen' tells the story of the child-bride of Edmund Tudor who, although widowed in her early teens, uses her determination of character and wily plotting to infiltrate the house of York to ultimately ensure that her only son, Henry Tudor, triumphs as King of England. The Red Queen' tells the story of the child-bride of Edmund Tudor who, although widowed in her early teens, uses her determination of character and wily plotting to infiltrate the house of York to ultimately ensure that her only son, Henry Tudor, triumphs as King of England.
GROGAN, Paul Barbed Wire and Babushkas Paul Grogan, a young journalist with a passion for his paddle, undertakes an epic journey from the Amur River's source in Mongolia to its mouth on the coast of the Pacific, taking his canoe and his mate Rich for companionship. They experience the suspicion and the hospitality of the locals in equal measure.
GUDENKAUF, Heather The Weight of Silence 'Beautifully written, compassionately told, and relentlessly suspenseful.'
HADDON, Mark The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time A murder mystery like no other, this novel features Christopher Boone, a 15 year-old who suffers from Asperger's syndrome. When he finds a neighbour's dog murdered, he sets out on a journey which will turn his whole world upside down
HADDON, Mark A Spot of Bother At 57, George is settling down to retirement. Then his daughter announces she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her family is not pleased, and her mother is a bit put out by all the wedding planning, which gets in the way of her love affair with her husband's former colleague. Unnoticed in the uproar, George begins to lose his mind.
HADDON, Mark Stop what you’re doing and read this. Reading is not an innate human ability. Many people would rather read a newspaper, a magazine, a cereal packet, than a novel. But people have always needed stories. The essays in this book tell us about the experience of reading, why access to books should never be taken for granted, and how literature can save lives.
HAIG, Matt The Humans Professor Andrew Martin of Cambridge University solves the world's greatest mathematical riddle. Then he disappears. When he is found walking naked along the motorway, Professor Martin seems different. Besides the lack of clothes, he now finds normal life pointless. His loving wife and teenage son seem repulsive to him. In fact, he hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton. And he's a dog.
HAIG, Matt The Radleys The Radleys are an everyday family who juggle dysfunctional lives. Except, as Peter and Helen Radley know, but their children have yet to find out, the Radleys happen to be a family of abstaining vampires. When one night Clara finds herself driven to commit a bloodthirsty act, her parents decide to explain a few things.
HALL, Catherine The Proof of Love During the long, hot summer of 1976, a young Cambridge mathematician arrives in a remote village in the Lake District and takes on a job as a farm labourer. Painfully awkward and shy, Spencer Little is viewed with suspicion by the community and his only real friendship is with scruffy, clever ten-year-old Alice.
HALL, Sarah Haweswater Sarah Hall's first novel tells the story of a remote dale in the old county of Westmorland. The story concerns the flooding of the dale to make way for a reservoir against the wishes of many of the local hill farmers.
HAMANN, Hilary Anthropology of an American Girl Falling in love, maintaining fragile family relationships and growing to understand the incremental effect of every experience, Hilary Thayer Hamann's coming-of-age novel is a depiction of sexual and intellectual awakening against the backdrop of East Hampton in the 1970s and high-pressured Manhattan in the 1980s.
HAMID, Mohsin The Reluctant Fundamentalist At a cafe table in Lahore, a Pakistani man converses with a stranger. As dusk deepens to dark, he begins the tale that has brought him to this fateful meeting.
HANCOCK, Sheila Just me In 'The Two of Us' Sheila relived her life with John Thaw - years packed with love and family, delight and despair. And then she looked ahead. What next? 'Live adventurously', a Quaker advice, was hovering around her brain. Putting her and John's much-loved house in France on the market she embarked on a series of journeys.
HANCOCK, Sheila The Two of Us When John Thaw died in 2002, a nation lost one of its finest actors and Sheila Hancock lost a beloved husband. In this double biography she chronicles their lives, from the Second World War to the Iraq War, from rationing to affluence, together and apart.
HANNAH, Sophie Little Face Alice's baby is two weeks old when she leaves the house without her for the first time. When Alice returns she finds the door open, her husband asleep and a baby that she's convinced is not theirs sleeping. Her husband doesn't believe her and before the DNA test results are concluded Alice and the baby vanish and gradually her husband's dark past is revealed.
HARDACH, Sophie The Registrars Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages Swimming for his life towards traffickers on the Italian shore, Selim enters a world where Kurdish refugees disguise themselves as tomatoes, dates of birth are a matter of opinion, and a residency permit is a ticket to paradise. When he ends up in a small town in Germany, Selim believes he is finally safe, until the law catches up with him.
HARDING, Georgina Painter of Silence An intimate and devastating portrait of Romania during and after the Second World War, through the prism of a moving and utterly original friendship.
HARDY, Thomas Far from the Madding Crowd In a story which both upholds and questions rural values with a modern sensibility, three suitors vie for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. While their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart.
HARDY, Thomas The Mayor of Casterbridge On a drunken impulse, Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser by trade, sells his wife Susan and their child to a sailor. Years later, Susan returns to Casterbridge a widow, to seek her legal husband who is, surprisingly, now the Mayor.
HARDY, Thomas Tess of the d’Urbervilles Cruelly seduced by her relative, the cynical Alec D'Urberville, betrayed by the moral Angel Clare and haunted by her guilt and shame, Tess becomes Hardy's indictment of all the crimes and hypocrisies of 19th century England.
HARRER, Heinrich Seven Years in Tibet Interned in India at the outbreak of World War II, Austrian mountaineer and Olympic ski champion Harrer escaped on his third attempt and fled to the forbidden city of Lhasa where he spent the next 7 years, and where he befriended the young Dalai Lama
HARRIS, Jane Gillespie and I In 1888, young, art-loving Harriet Baxter arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. Befriending the Gillespie family, Harriet soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception.
HARRIS, Jane Gillespie and I In 1888, young, art-loving Harriet Baxter arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. Befriending the Gillespie family, Harriet soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception.
HARRIS, Robert Pompeii Harris recreates in spellbinding detail one of the most famous natural disasters of all time. And by focusing on the characters of an engineer and a scientist, he offers an entirely original perspective on the Roman world.
HARRIS, Robert An Officer and a Spy Paris, January 1895. Army officer Georges Picquart witnesses a convicted spy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, being humiliated in front of 20,000 spectators baying 'Death to the Jew!' The officer is promoted and put in command of shadowy intelligence unit, the Statistical Section. The spy is shipped off to a lifetime of solitary confinement on Devil's Island and his case seems closed forever. But gradually Picquart comes to believe there is something rotten at the heart of the Statistical Section.
HAWLEY, Noah The Good Father America is rocked by the shooting of a presidential candidate and the young man arrested for the crime is Danny, the child of Dr Paul Allen's first marriage - news which sends the family down a harrowing path of no return. Even if he is the only man in the world who believes in Danny's innocence, Paul is determined to prove it.
HEANEY, Seamus(ed) Rattle Bag Selected poems
Heath, Rachel The Finest Type of English Womanhood It's 1946, and 17-year-old Laura Trelling is stagnating in her dilapidated Sussex family home, while her quietly eccentric parents slip further into isolation. Then she meets Paul Lovell - a chance encounter that will change the course of her destiny and bring her a new life in pre-apartheid South Africa
HELLER, Joseph Catch 22 At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel is a satirical indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is the tale of Captain Yossarian who spends his time plotting to survive.
HELLER,Zoe Notes on a Scandal When Sheba arrives Barbara senses that she will be different from the rest of her staff-room colleagues. Sure enough Sheba starts an affair with a pupil and is caught. When all the dust settles and Sheba's life falls apart, Barbara is there for her even if she can't condone her sexual behaviour.
HENNESSEY, Patrick The Junior Officers’ Reading Club Written in spare and lucid prose, this title describes with alarming vividness not only the frenetic violence of a soldier's life, but the periods of stifling and (sometimes) comic boredom, living inside an institution in a state of flux, an Army caught between a world that needs it and a society that no longer understands it.
HERBERT, James Ghosts of Sleath Sleath is a village hidden away in the Chiltern hills, nothing ever seems to happen here - that is until the ghosts start to appear. A psychic investigator is called in but the events which unfold in front of him drive him to the edge of his sanity.
HERBERT, Kathleen Moon in Leo A vivid and scholarly portrait of England in the reign of Charles II. The joy of the Restoration is a fading memory, and conflicts of land ownership and religious toleration are raging. The story is set on the Furness Peninsula in Northern England, now part of Cumbria, and concerns how ordinary folks survive, live and love in times of political upheaval and social conflict.
HIGHSMITH, Patricia Eleven 'Eleven' is a collection of masterpieces of Highsmith's particular art, full of compulsion, foreboding and cruel pleasures.
HILL, Frances Deliverance from Evil Salem, Massachusetts, Winter 1692: In the parsonage of Reverend Samuel Parris, two young girls are seated by the fire and play at fortune-telling as snow falls softly outside. What starts as a game sends one of the girls into a hysterical trance, and a small town begins its descent into madness.
HILL, Reginald The Woodcutter Wolf Hadda's life has been a fairytale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter's son, he has risen to become a successful entrepreneur, happily married to the girl of his dreams. A knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison, abandoned by friends & family, Wolf retreats into silence.
HILL, Susan The Woman in Black When Arthur Kipps attends the funeral of Alice Drablow he is unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind her house. It is not until he glimpses a woman dressed all in black at the funeral that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold.
HINCHCLIFFE, Sally Out of a Clear Sky After her long-term relationship ends, Manda finds solace in bird watching. The birds provide her with an escape from her loneliness, especially as she seems to be losing her group of close friends along with her boyfriend. Then she falls prey to the even more sinister attentions of another birdwatcher.
HISLOP, Victoria The Island On the brink of her own life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding longs to find out about her mother's past. But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London.
HITCHMAN, Beatrice Petite Mort A silent film, destroyed in a fire in 1914, before it was seen by its director. A lowly seamstress who believes her talent - and the secret she keeps - will soon get her a dressing room of her own. A famous creator of cinematic illusions, husband to a beautiful actress, the most adored icon of the Parisian studios. All fit together, like scenes in a movie. And as you will see, this plot has a twist we beg you not to disclose.
HOBSON, Gladys Awakening Love Grabs the reader’s attention and holds it from beginning to end. Full of surprises and twists.
HOEG, Peter Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow Smilla Jaspersen, the resourceful, tenacious and bloody-minded Greenlander heroine, has won the hearts of readers the world over in her quest to find the truth behind the death of a six year-old boy
HOMES, A.M. May we be Forgiven Harry is a Richard Nixon scholar who leads a quiet, regular life; his brother George is a high-flying TV producer, with a murderous temper. They have been uneasy rivals since childhood. Then one day George loses control so extravagantly that he precipitates Harry into an entirely new life.
HOOPER, Mary Velvet With both parents dead, Velvet is an orphan who has to rely upon her wits to make a living. Then she is noticed by Madame Savoya, a famed medium, who asks Velvet to come to work for her. But soon Velvet realises that Madame Savoya is not all that she says she is, and that her life is in danger.
HOPE, Anna Wake Five Days in November, 1920. As the people of London await the arrival of the Unknown Soldier from France, three women are dealing with loss in their own way: Hettie, who dances for sixpence a waltz at the Hammersmith Palais; Evelyn, who toils at a lowly job in the Pensions Office; and Ada, a housewife who is beset by visions of her dead son.
HORNBY, Nick Fever Pitch This is Hornby's account of what being a football fan really means. An extraordinary combination of football, obsession and autobiography, Fever Pitch has become a contemporary classic.
HORNBY, Nick Juliet Naked This novel is about the nature of creativity and obsession, and how two lonely people can gradually find each other.
HORNBY, Simonetta A The Almond Picker In a village in Sicily 'La Mennulara' lies dead. For years she had been at the heart of one of the richest families. Now, at her death, the gossip among the villagers is reaching fever pitch as each begins to wonder just how she managed to amass such a large fortune.
HOSSEINI, Khaled Kite Runner Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day
HOSSEINI, Khaled And the Mountains Echoed A multi-generational family story revolving around brothers and sisters, 'And the Mountains Echoed' explores the ways in which they love, wound, betray, honour and sacrifice for each other.
HOSSEINI, Khaled A Thousand Splendid Suns This is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to the post-Taliban rebuilding—that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives—the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness—are inextricable from the history playing out around them.
HOWARD, Elizabeth The Light Years Three generations of Cazalets spend each summer in their family house. For two unforgettable summers they are safe from the storm clouds of World War II. These are sunlit days of childish games, lavish family meals and picnics on the beach.
HUCKNELL, Joseph Life’s Tales A Life’s Tales is the story of a life lived in a vanished age; a life lived with compassion, insight, ambition and an adventurous spirit; a life fighting against discrimination against gays, and a constant search for self improvement.
HUNT, Rebecca Mr. Chartwell Mr Chartwell is a huge, black dog. In this original, moving, funny and exuberant novel, Rebecca Hunt explores how two unlikely lives collide as Mr Chartwell's motives are revealed to be far darker and deeper than they seem.
HUSBAND, Marion The Good Father When Peter Wright's father dies he leaves his entire fortune to Peter's best friend Jack. Over a few weeks in the summer of 1959 the consequences of the old man's legacy seriously affect three men’s lives, Jack, who has brought up his three children alone since his wife was killed, Wright's solicitor Harry, who is trying to rebuild his relationship with his estranged son Guy, and Peter himself, whose friendship with Jack is threatened by his father's death and the terrible secrets he has kept since his return from the Japanese POW camps.
HUSBAND, Marion Paper Moon The passionate love affair between Spitfire pilot Bobby Harris and photographer's model Nina Tate lasts through the turmoil of World War Two, but is tested when his plane is shot down. Disfigured and wanting to hide from the world, Bobby retreats to an empty house his grandfather has left him, a house haunted by secrets.
INNES, Miranda Cinnamon City Have you ever wondered what it would be like to purchase a seductively run-down property in one of the most romantic and exotic cities on earth? Ex-Country-Life garden editor Miranda Innes acquired a raid in Marrakech almost by accident. This is what happened next.
IRONSIDE, Virginia No! I don’t want to join a Book Club Too young to get whisked away by a Stannah Stairlift, or to enjoy the luxury of a walk-in-bath (but not so much that she doesn't enjoy comfortable shoes) Marie, is all the same, getting on in years - and she's thrilled about it. This fictionalised diary is what happens when grumpy old women meet Bridget Jones.
IRVING, John A Widow for One Year John Irving presents a novel about a family marked by tragedy. Both ribald and erotic, A Widow for One Year follows the fortunes of Ruth Cole at three important points in her life.
ISHIGURO, Kazuo Never Let me Go Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham - an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. The children there were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there?
IVEY, Eowyn The Snow Child Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start in the raw Alaskan wilderness. In a moment of tenderness, the pair build a snowman - or rather a snow girl - together. The next morning, all trace of her has disappeared. But Jack can't shake the notion that he glimpsed a small figure running in the trees in the dawn light.