'One of the best novels I've read in years: obsessive, intimate and very funny' Blake Morrison, Author of Two Sisters'Stunning . . . it almost feels transgressive' Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail'One of the most startling novels I've read this year' Frances Wilson, TLS'This book is brilliant - brave, truthful and intelligent' Wendy Cope'Funny, ...

As a young woman, Mavis Gaunt leaves post-war London to make a new life for herself in rural Devon, where she spent a few blissful months of her childhood as an evacuee. Living alone in the verdant hamlet of Shipleigh, she believes she's found a heaven on earth - until a violent tragedy brings trouble to paradise, and turns Mavis's idyllic solitude into a tormented, guarded isolation.Decades later, the arrival of a newcomer to the village forces Mavis to make a final reckoning: sho...

There is more going on in the village of Buckleigh than meets the eye and its sense of community is often as much a curse as a blessing. While Barrie, the local mayor, is driven into the arms of tough single mother Debbie, his father lusts after a former chorus girl whose breath now smells of 'cabbage and chocolates'. Meanwhile, a farmer's wife is driven to murder by her unfaithful husband, a carnival queen faces an uncertain future and the postman is in danger of realising his sexual fant...

It is 1979 and in a ramshackle cottage in Northumberland fifteen-year-old Ruth is desperate to leave behind the gradual implosion of her parents' marriage as she pursues her own quest for love and excitement. Fantasies about the son of the local farmer offer a temporary distraction from the rising tensions at home but Ruth soon discovers that the family are coming to terms with a very different tragedy...Told largely from the darkly humorous perspective of Ruth, Jane Feaver's novel...

The New York Times bestseller by the author of Cloud Atlas• Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize •Named One of the Top Ten Fiction Books of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly, and O: The Oprah Magazine• A New York Times Notable Book • An American Library Association Notable Book • Winner of the World Fantasy Award

**Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, Slate, LitHub, Fresh Air, and moreFrom the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic…casually stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) historical novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London, from World War II through the postwar decades.**Lunchtime...

Escape to the country with Gervase Phinn's heartwarming tales of life as a school inspector in Yorkshire'Gervase Phinn's memoirs have made him a hero in school staff-rooms' Daily Telegraph______What's your name? I asked the child.'Tequila,' she replied. I'm named after a drink.''Tequila Sunrise,' I murmured.'No,' pouted the child. 'Tequila Braithwaite.'Now in h...

Join Gervase Phinn in the classroom where he faces his greatest challenge: keeping a straight face as teachers and children alike conspire to have him laughing out loud . . .'So funny, it will echo things that happen in your own life' 5***** Reader Review'A wonderful, entertaining and enjoyable read. The humour is infectious' 5***** Reader Review______'Could you tell me how to spell "sex" please?'...

John Peel's programme Home Truths first brought Judy's moving childhood story to light – Abducted by her psychotic spiritualist father and kept like a dog in the backyard, brutalised at the hands of nuns in a Manchester orphanage, and left to live wild on the streets. But Judy survived and today has founded 7 children's centres in South Africa.John Peel first brought Judy's moving childhood story to light on ‘Home Truths’. Abducted by her psychotic spiritualist father and kept like...

Jenny grew up in a house where no-one was safe. Born one of five children in the East End, her childhood was spent in squalor and terror. Her father's violent beatings, humiliations, and sexual abuse were part of daily life; her mother - also his sexual victim and savagely beaten - was no source of help.Deprived of love and all comforts, the children would turn to each other for support and to the only adult they could trust, Auntie.This is the story of how Jenny, her siste...

Jackson Leaves - an Edwardian house in Penylan.Built 1906, semi-detached, three storeys, spacious, beautifully presented. Left in good condition to Rob and Julia by Rob's late aunt.It's an ordinary sort of a house. Except for the way the rooms don't stay in the same places. And the strange man that turns up in the airing cupboard. And the apparitions. And the temporal surges that attract the attentions of Torchwood.And the fact that the first owner...

They were inseparable until an innocent mistake tore them apart.Growing up, Viola and Issy clung to each other in the wake of their mother's eccentricity, as she dragged them from a commune to a tiny Welsh village. They thought the three of them would be together forever.But an innocent mistake one summer set them on drastically different paths. Now in their twenties, Issy is trying to hold together a life as a magazine art director, while Viola is slowly destroying herself...