Tim Cleverley inherits a failing pub in Wales, which he plans to rescue by enlisting an American pulp novelist to concoct an entirely fabricated 'mystery' about the mysterious poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, who composed 'The Wreck of the Deutschland' nearby. Blending the real stories of Hopkins and the shipwrecked nuns he wrote about with a contemporary love story, while casting a wry eye on the Dan Brown industry, The Hopkins Conundrum is a highly original blend of historical fiction and co...

They dug up his bones. They didn't know he had a mind of his own. 'I loved this smart and divinely wry book… what a terrific eye and ear is at work here!' ELINOR LIPMAN Under tennis courts in the ruins of a great abbey, archaeologists find the remains of St Edmund, once venerated as England's patron saint, but lost for half a millennium. Culture Secretary Marina Spencer, adored by those who have never met her, scents an opportunity. She promotes Edmund as a new patron saint for the United ...

An atheist comedy featuring God and a confused young man from Hackney. When gay, pleasure-seeking Stefano Cartwright is almost killed by a wave while at the beach, his journey up a tunnel of light convinces him that God exists after all, and he may need to change his ways if he is not to end up in hell. When God happens to look down his celestial telescope and see Stefano, he is obliged to pay unprecedented attention to an obscure planet in a distant galaxy, and ends up on the greatest adv...

It is 1777, and England's second-greatest portrait artist, Thomas Gainsborough, has a thriving practice a stone's throw from London's royal palaces. Meanwhile, the press talks up his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pedantic theoretician who is the top dog of British portraiture. Gainsborough loathes pandering to grand sitters, but he changes his tune when he is commissioned to paint King George III and his large family. In their final, most bitter competition, who will be chosen as c...

Judge Walden is back, to preside over five new cases at Bermondsey Crown Court.Retired resident judge Peter Murphy takes us back to the world of criminal trials in South London for another session with Charlie keeping the peace between his fellow judges - Marjorie, 'Legless' and Hubert - while fighting off the attacks of the Grey Smoothies, the civil servants who seem intent on reducing the court's dwindling resources to vanishing point in the name of 'business cas...

A Times Best Book of 2019.'Paver is one of Britain's modern greats. This sinister, gothic chiller shows why' BIG ISSUE, Books of the Year 2019. "Something has been let loose..."In Edwardian Suffolk, a manor house stands alone in a lost corner of the Fens: a glinting wilderness of water whose whispering reeds guard ancient secrets. Maud is a lonely child growing up without a mother,...

When Charlie Walden took on the job of Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, he was hoping for a quiet life. But he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace between three feisty fellow judges who have very different views about how to do their job, and about how Charlie should do his.And as if that's not enough, there's the endless battle against the 'Grey Smoothies', the humourless grey-suited civil servants who seem determined to drown Charlie in paperwork and stri...

Readers rave about the Ben Schroeder series:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Another fantastic Ben Schroeder book'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Marvellous'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'I would award 6 stars for this story'1985, Cambridgeshire. An MPs wife is involved in a fatal car crash, and may be over the alcohol limit.Ben Schroeder QC returns to defend her but nothing is straightforward as he gets tangled in a web of political ambition and intrigue.

'Timely, necessary and important' J.K. Rowling'[This book is] guaranteed to remind us what we have still to fight for. I can't think of a single person who wouldn't benefit from reading it' Observer'Bindel is a rock star of second-wave feminism . . . an important, courageous book' The Times'Bindel delivers a robust call to arms in every cha...

'When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw' - Nelson Mandela1964, Apartheid South Africa. Danie du Plessis, the son of a conservative Afrikaner family, is poised to start a glittering legal academic career at one of South Africa's leading universities, when he falls in love with a student, Amy Coetzee. But there's a problem: he's white, she's not. Facing arrest, imprisonment and ruin, the couple flee So...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO PRIZE 2023'A book that could not be more necessary' Observer'Eloquent, clever and devastating' The Times'Deftly illustrates how ageist misogyny remains an acceptable prejudice' GuardianWhat is about women in middle-age and beyond that seems to enrage - almost everyone?In the last few years, as ident...

'A good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs' - Sir Robert Mark'A good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs' - Sir Robert MarkA clever, accomplished Cambridge graduate with a good job and an attentive lover, Imogen Lester seems to have the world at her feet. But when her parents are murdered abroad while working for the Diplomatic Service, she is suddenly thrown headlong into a murky world of espionage and org...