As plain-clothes men go, Dangerous Davies looks like a non-starter. The small fry of petty larceny and minor disturbances in the backwaters of north-west London are his daily round. His philosophising Welsh drinking companion Mod, his outsized and unruly dog Kitty, his quarrels with his landlady Mrs Fulljames - none of these bodes well for the efficient solving of crimes and outwitting of villainy. But Davies is encouraged by his beautiful friend Jemma, and every so often he stumbles upon ...

'It rained a lot and steamed when the sun shone. It was always hot. But it was safe...'One way or another the Communist guerrilla war in Malaya kept a whole British army occupied from 1948 until 1952. They were the virgin soldiers. Idle, homesick, afraid, bored, oversexed and unsatisfied.A young virgin like Brigg had to grab his fun while and where he could - in the Liberty Club, in Juicy Lucy's flat or up in Phillipa's room - in one frantic attempt at living before he died...

At the start of the war in 1939 James Bevan is a junior officer approaching middle-age, attached to a small anti-aircraft unit on the south coast.Abandoned by his wife, the soldiers he command are his family: Bairnsfather, whose sexual encounters with his girl friend Muriel take place in an air-raid shelter; Cartwright, trying to keep two women on his gunner's pay of a shilling a day; Hignet, cosily educating himself in the orderly room. It is a rude awakening when they are called ...

TROPIC OF RUISLIP is a sage for life on a modern executive housing estate, seething with the fears, snobbereis, frustrations and lusts of well-heeled young couples trundling uneasily towards middle age.

In the spring of 1940, the spectre of war turned into grim reality.And on the English home front, men, women and children found themselves swept into a maelstrom of fear and uncertainty while events abroad led inexorably from the debacles of Norway and Dunkirk to the horror and glory of the Battle of Britain.For the Lovatt family - James, seconded on a hush-hush assignment to work with Churchill, and his brother Harry, a naval officer - for Bess Spofford, Joanne Schorner, G...

Written with the characteristic wit and good humour, Leslie Thomas's novel tells the story of a grown man who runs away from home, and the adventures that befall him in his quest for a new lease of life. His latest love affair discovered (thanks to an observant fifteen-year-old daughter who points out the still-wet suds of expensive soap lingering in his ear), bestselling author Nicholas Boulting sets off amid a torrent of abuse to see what else life can offer. After his fantasy escape to ...

In a sunlit, secret valley in the green mountains of central Italy, two people meet away from the horrors and clamour of battle. David Hopkins, a young fisherman from west Wales and Kate Medhurst, from a genteel town in the Thames Valley, embark upon an idyllic love affair away from the conflict that surrounds them. However, they cannot escape the war forever, and when they are targeted by a single enemy aeroplane their dreams are destroyed.Weeks later, Hopkins wakes up in a Russia...

The new tale of love and life, rich with humour and pathos, from our best loved storyteller. From the prison cell where Chloe Smith, 43, is awaiting trial for the merciful murder of the only man who ever loved her with honesty, she recalls the men in her life who lied to her. She remembers her adored father, who drank too much; the loss of her virginity at Stonehenge to a schoolboy, her marriage to petty crook Zane Tomkins, the Isle of Wight ferryman who said he was a lonely deep sea sailo...

Fresh from Los Angeles, Mrs Pearl Collingwood and her daughter Rona arrive in the frenzied no-man's-land of Heathrow airport: from the nearby village of Bedmansworth, Edward Richardson jets in and out of it faster than his marriage can tolerate. Yet precisely where village and airport overlap, there exists a world bubbling with intrigues and assignations, with wit, pathos and excitement, that all readers of Leslie Thomas will recognize as his alone.

From Barnardo boy to original virgin soldier; from apprentice journalist in London's Fleet Street to famous novelist...At times funny, at times sad, but always honest and utterly compulsive, Leslie Thomas's story is straight out of fiction. As an orphan, he picked his way through the rubble of post-war Britain and was sent on national service to the Far East. Later he became a Fleet Street reporter, with hilarious experiences to relate, and then became the bestselling author of

Summer 1940. The evacuation of Dunkirk proves that the British can rise to a challenge, even against seemingly insurmountable odds. But now the soldiers walk the streets of Dover, even wandering through Woolworths store, and take weary turns on the town's skating rink.Life, despite the threat of invasion and the reality of bombing, must go on and people must take comfort where they find it. Toby Hendry, a fighter pilot, is awaiting orders when he meets Giselle, a young Frenchwoman ...

The worst has happened. On the eve of their return to Blighty, Brigg and his fellow National Servicemen find themselves sentenced to another six months in Panglin Barracks...Many of the surviving characters from The Virgin Soldiers live again in these pages: dogged Tasker, the odious Sergeant Wellbeloved, the vulnerable Colonel Bromley Pickering and the comically touching Juicy Lucy.But we encounter new characters too: the fanatical and demented Lieutenant Grainger...