**National BestsellerKate Pullinger's Governor General's Literary Award-winning novel about a lady, her maid and the man that comes between them.**Lady Duff Gordon is the toast of Victorian London society but when she contracts tuberculosis, she and her devoted lady's maid, Sally, set sail for Egypt and an entirely new life. Sally and Lady Duff Gordon thrive in their new and exotic surroundings, learning Arabic, adopting native dress and visiting the tombs of ancient pharao...

Sharp, engaging contemporary fiction from Governor General's Award winner Kate Pullinger, author of The Mistress of NothingA man falls from the sky and against all odds lands himself a new life.Spring 2010. Harriet works in local radio in London, England. When a volcano explodes in Iceland and airspace shuts down over Europe stranding most of her colleagues abroad, she seizes the opportunity to change her working life. At the same time, Yacu...

For readers of Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler, a powerful, heartrending novel about a man on the run from himself, by Governor General's Award-winning author Kate Pullinger.On a rain-soaked Vancouver sidewalk in 1995, a homeless man fights for breath. Forest Green is the story of how he ended up there.Arthur Lunn is a golden boy who spends long summer days roaming the hills and swimming in the lakes of the Okanagan Valley. But the Great D...

Sometimes everything is not enough...Fran has a good life: a happy marriage to a successful man, a healthy, sweet-natured toddler, a nice London flat. Then, one day, she walks out, leaving it all behind.As Fran travels to Las Vegas and on to Vancouver she is haunted by memories of her own childhood and driven to reconnect with her estranged mother, Ireni, whose descent into alcoholism has left her destitute.Will understanding why her own mother fail...

“A perfect, gruesome, little tale” Independent on SundayAgnes Samuel is an American, beautiful, witty, cool, the kind of woman people remember. She arrives among the respectable citizens of Warboys like a cat among the pigeons.Before long she has insinuated herself into the affections of the sleepy Fenland village and into the heart of the ancient Throckmorton family, a family that harbours a dark secret.Nobody remembers another Agnes Samue...

Audrey is a journalist living in London. Anonymous in the city she has left her troubled past far behind in Canada. A passionate affair with Jack, and an intense new friendship with Shereen bring uncertainties and confusion and Audrey finds herself drawn into the dramatic story of James Douglas,19th Century pioneer and the first mixed race Governor of British Columbia. As she digs deeper into his life she is forced to confront her own past, her high school friendship with Jane and the affa...

On Platform One of Paddington Station in London, there is a statue of an unknown soldier; he’s reading a letter. On the hundredth anniversary of the declaration of war everyone in the country was invited to take a moment and write that letter. A selection of those letters are published here, in a new kind of war memorial – one made only of words.In a year of public commemoration ‘Letter to an Unknown Soldier’ invited everyone to step back from the public ceremonies and take a few p...

Mina should fear the night, she should fear what she becomes. But she does not… Stephen Smith is in love. The object of his desire is Mina Savage, the illegitimate child whose parents are themselves both illegitimate, a young woman whose ambitions and appetites outstrip Stephen’s wildest fantasies. They become lovers, but while Stephen pursues domestic tranquillity Mina becomes ever more elusive and mysterious. When she repeatedly disappears at night, Steph...

The recent dead have been trying to reach her for years—but their messages never made any sense until now.The Recent Dead follows Flo, a twenty-three-year-old woman mourning the loss of her best friend, Lana, and working an unpaid, dead-end internship in media—all while receiving a constant barrage of text messages and voicemails that appear to be from the beyond. The messages are indecipherable, incoherent—and hair-raising. Eerie sounds over the phone. Ju...

This book considers how a combination of place-based writing and location responsive technologies produce new kinds of literary experiences. Building on the work done in the Ambient Literature Project (2016–2018), this books argues that these encounters constitute new literary forms, in which the authored text lies at the heart of an embodied and mediated experience. The visual, sonic, social and historic resources of place become the elements of a live and emergent mise-en-scène. Specific...

The latest stunning collection of short stories, including the winning entry of the 2011 Asham Short Stories Award, which was set up 1995 to encourage and promote new writing. It is the only short story competition whose winners and runners-up are published alongside some of our best known women writers. Past collections have included specially commissioned stories by Carol Shields, Michele Roberts, Barbara Trapido, Patricia Duncker, Helen Simpson, Helen Dunmore, Deborah Moggach. Margaret ...

'As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is thewhole world' Virginia WoolfAsham House inSussex was once home to Virginia and Leonard Woolf and is theinspiration behind the Asham Award. Launched in 1996 to support andencourage new writers, it is Britain's only prize for short stories bywomen.Waving at the Gardenerpresents the twelve fresh, engaging and original voices shortlisted forthe As...