Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the two World Wars. Upon the death of her German baron father, Billi moves from the family château to live with her vibrant and erratic English mother on the French Riviera. From there she is sent for schooling in England, where she lives an itinerant life, boarding among a bohemian crowd, attending galleries and pu...

Bloomsbury presents Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding, read by Sian ThomasSHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of a hospital. Deaf and mute, he is unable to communicate until a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page.The memories are Safta's also. For the man is Augustin, son of the cook a...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Then She Vanishes written by Claire Douglas, read by Sian Thomas, Katie O'Flynn, Nathalie Buscombe and Olivia Dowd.That summer, the three girls had the world at their feet.Now, one is missing.On a summer's night in 1994, sixteen-year-old Flora Powell vanished from her sleepy seaside town. She left no trace - only heartache for her mother and her siste...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Everything is Lies by Helen Callaghan, read by Anna Popplewell and Sian Thomas.No-one is who you think they areSophia's parents lead quiet, unremarkable lives. At least that is what she's always believed.Everyone has secretsUntil the day she arrives at her childhood home to find a house ringing with silence. Her mother is hanging from a tree. Her father is lying in a pool of...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Nanny and What She Knew comes the terrifying story of what can happen after all your dreams come trueBe careful what you wish for...Childhood sweethearts Nicole and Tom are a normal, loving couple—until a massive lottery win changes their lives overnight.Soon they’ve moved into a custom-built state-of-the-art Glass Barn on the stunning grounds of Lancaut Manor in G...

Brought to you by Penguin.‘Wonderful and timely … Hugely recommended’ STEPHEN FRYWhat do you and an ancient philosopher have in common? It turns out much more than you might think…Aristotle was an extraordinary thinker, perhaps the greatest in history. Yet he was preoccupied by an ordinary question: how to be happy. His deepest belief was that we can all be happy in a meaningful, sustained way – and he led by exampl...

Brought to you by Penguin.Five lives overlap across two centuries. School teacher Geoffrey’s war takes him to the brink of sanity; Billy’s fortitude lifts him from the Victorian slums in London; Elena and Jeanne interrogate the notion of the soul, from opposite points of view, a century apart. And for Anya, a young American singer-songwriter, only her producer Jack can understand the depths of their bond as art and life collide.In a symphony of fiction,

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Frozen River, this enthralling feat of historical suspense unravels the extraordinary twists and turns in Anna Anderson’s claim to be Anastasia Romanov. Is she the Russian Grand Duchess or the thief of another woman's legacy?"Tantalizing, surprising, compelling, and utterly fascinating."—Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours**Russia, July 17,...

“*Then She Vanishes***lifts the stone on a cold case disappearance and asks chilling questions about friendship, loyalty, love, and obsession.”—**New York Times bestselling author Gilly MacmillanA twisty, compulsive thriller full of jolting shocks and startling secrets involving two sisters, a disappearance, a double murder, and a reporter determined to find the truth from the bestselling author of Local Girl M...

**Brought to you by Penguin.Another undisclosed facet of her million secrets glittered before us...**Emerence is a domestic servant – strong, fierce, eccentric, and with a reputation for being a first-rate housekeeper. When Magda, a young Hungarian writer, takes her on to help around the house, she never imagines that this will ignite one of the most important relationships of her life.It takes twenty years for a complex trust between the two women to be slowly, car...

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage-lights on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades.From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Bu...

A portrait in her own words of the female Lawrence of Arabia, the subject of the PBS documentary Letters from Baghdad, voiced by Tilda Swinton, and the major motion picture Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, and Robert Pattinson and directed by Werner HerzogGertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the twentieth century, she turned her back on Victoria...