Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast – the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly – her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with ...

'I can talk for as long as you like, no problem. You'll just have to tell me when to stop. How far back do you want to take it?'Tell is a probing and compelling examination of the ways in which we make stories of our own lives and of other people's. Jonathan Buckley's novel is structured as a series of interview transcripts with a woman who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman and art collector who has mysteriously disappeared.The joint winner of...

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, Tell is an exuberant, intensely fluid, and probing examination of the ways in which we make stories of our own and of other people’s livesA novel of intense, flickering intelligence, Tell is structured as a series of interviews with a woman who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman and art collector who has mysteriously disappeared, and may or may not have committed suicide. What might be a gloomy subjec...

**Longlisted for The Booker Prize 2025“Buckley creates a novel of quiet brilliance and sly humour, packed with mystery and indeterminacy.”—The Booker Prize judges**After losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast—the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. Soon, she encounters some of the people she met last time around: John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew; Petros, an eccentric mechan...

A woman named Naomi arrives at her sister's house, intending, it seems, to say goodbye. She is abandoning her city life for a remote Scottish retreat, which she will share with a man called Bernát, whom she considers some kind of visionary. In a sequence of stories filtered through multiple re-tellings, she illuminates the character of this elusive individual. One story seems of special significance: about Afonso, an Amazon boatman, who could be the last speaker of his mother tongue, a lan...

Daniel Brennan, approaching the premature end of his life, retreats to a room in his brother's suburban house. To divert himself and to entertain Ellen, his carer, he writes the journal that is Telescope, blurring truth, gossip and fiction in vignettes of his own life and the lives of those close to him. Above all he focuses on his siblings: mercurial Celia, whose life as a teacher in Italy seems to have run aground, and kindly Charlie, the entrepreneur of the family.Enric...

The small Tuscan town of Castelluccio is preparing for its annual festival, a spectacular pageant in which a leading role will be taken by the self-exiled English painter Gideon Westfall. A man proudly out of step with modernity, Westfall is regarded by some as a maestro, but in Castelluccio - as in the wider art world - he has his enemies, and his niece - just arrived from England - is no great admirer either. At the same time a local girl is missing, a disappearance that seems to implica...

‘I often ask myself what makes a story work,’ wrote the greatAmerican author, Flannery O’Connor. ‘I have decided that it isprobably some action, some gesture of a character... which isboth totally right and totally unexpected... one that is both incharacter and beyond character.’The five stories shortlisted for this year’s BBC NationalShort Story Award with Book Trust all feature peoplemaking just such gestures, acting in ways that reach be...

In the small hours of January 1st, a man begins to write, having watched Le Grand Concert de la Nuit, a film in which a former lover - Imogen - plays a major role. For the next year, he writes something every day.His journal is a ritual of commemoration and an investigation of the character of Imogen and her relationships - with himself; with her family and friends; with other lovers.Imogen is an elusive subject, and The Great Concert of the Night is an in...

'Bright, beautiful and achievable' – Mary Berry'A swoon-inducing, endlessly useful book' – The Garden'This fusion of sheer joy and hard data is a powerful combination, a formula so convincing on every level that it makes any gardener want to carve out space for a cutting garden' – The New York TimesTips, tricks and everything you cou...

Originally the small plots where rural British workers grew the vegetables, herbs and flowers they needed, cottage gardens were romanticised and reimagined by nostalgic Victorian gardeners into a bucolic idyll.The style has endured ever since: drifts of colourful perennials mingle with fragrant roses, boisterous self-seeders teeter on the brink of chaos, fruit and vegetables scramble through rustic supports. Small in scale, wildlife friendly, natural and organic, 'old-fashioned' co...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Stunning pictures and packed full of really good advice and inspiration' – Monty Don'Such a feast for the eyes and GREAT inspiration!' – Jo Whiley---------------Pots are everywhere in Sarah Raven's garden at Perch Hill. Every corner comes to life with their colour and vibrancy.A Year Full of Pots overbrims with year-round inspiration, plan...