Established in 2005, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University was originally established to highlight a literary genre regarded as undervalued and under threat. It aimed to recognise and celebrate the very best writers of short fiction who had no prize equivalent to major literary awards like the Man Booker Prize. 19 years on, the short story is in robust health and the BBC National Short Story Award is recognised as the most prestigious for a single short story with th...

Don't miss the hilarious novel from the #1 bestselling author, Maddie Please, author of the brilliantly funny, Old Girls on Deck!A fresh start with a French twist!Joy Chandler had one simple wish: a nice, drama-free family reunion. But instead? Daughter Sara announces she's getting divorced and seems determined to drown her sorrows in wine, while son John and his perfect wife Vanessa casually drop the bombshell that they’re moving to New York—without so m...

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHERRECIPIENT OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION AWARD'Evaristo possesses enough ball-busting originality to create whole novels for each of the historical characters she resurrects . . . [she creates] funky yarns so tantalising you want to devour them' GuardianMeet Stanley Williams: Single, in his thirties, grieving ...

Maxim Jakubowski has once again compiled a blockbuster collection of the year's most outstanding short crime fiction published in the UK. His aim is always to present the whole breadth of crime, mystery and thriller writing, from gentle stories of detection to puzzling historical labyrinths full of devious characters and sharp social comment about our imperfect society in some savage, and often scary stories.Last year saw a fifth Crime Writers Association Short Story Dagger award f...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Ambitious and beautifully crafted' THE TIMES'Faulks writes with great emotional authority' SUNDAY TIMESAmidst the letters of the alphabet, a life reveals itself. Flashing backwards and forwards through time, we meet Pietro Russell. As a photographer in Sri Lanka, a schoolboy in Fulham and even before he was born to his wounded English father and young Italian mother. The ...

Maureen Lipman has the knack of making the everyday supremely entertaining, the ordinary absurd and unexpected. This new collection of pieces sparkles with her inimitable prose and pithy opinions. Encounters in the street, at the hairdresser, in the dressing room, on her travels at home and abroad, indeed wherever she goes, are sharply observed, joyfully and - at times - ruefully recorded. Included too are a selection of brilliant monologues which capture the many voices of Maureen in wond...

'The Mersey Sound is an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader by publishing representative work by each of three modern poets in a single volume, in each case the selection has been made to illustrate the poet's characteristics in style and form'. With this modest brief, The Mersey Sound was conceived and first published in 1967. An anthology which features Roger McGough's work, alongside that of Brian Patten and Adrian Henri (The Liverpool Poets)...

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its sixth year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the b...

A raw and engrossing portrait of familial and marital dysfunction by “one of Britain’s most original young writers” (The Observer).Neve is a writer in her mid-thirties married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician wh...

Roger McGough is one of Britain's best loved poets and this collection 'charts [his] passage from youthful exuberance to the wry reflection of his later years. What remains the same throughout the 40 years is the poet's winning wit, accessibility and abiding readability' Independent ----------------------------------'Time has confirmed ... that McGough's talent was much more substantial than many of his long-forgotten detractors suspected. If he was a pop poet it was not in any eph...

Robinson Crusoe discovers thousands of ‘half-naked savages’ having it large on Ibiza.James Bond is on a mission, as a 24-hour call-out plumber.‘The young stable lad is a moody fellow,’ say reviewers of Wuthering Heights in The Good Hotel Guide.Hans Christian Andersen gets into the subprime mortgage racket.Stephen King attempts a love story that doesn’t involve buckets of blood.Robbie Burns cheers on Andy Murray at Wimbledon....

A rich, penetrating memoir about the author's relationship with a flawed but influential figure—the painter Lucian Freud—and the satisfactions and struggles of a life lived through art.One of Britain's most important contemporary painters, Celia Paul has written a reflective, intimate memoir of her life as an artist. Self-Portrait tells the artist's story in her own words, drawn from early journal entries as well as memory, of her childhood in India and he...