Sul ponte del ferry che lo porta in Germania, Futh ripensa allo stesso viaggio affrontato tanti anni prima, appena dodicenne, in compagnia del padre, per stemperare il dolore dell’abbandono della madre. Ora, stringendo tra le mani il portaprofumo d’argento con l’essenza di violetta amatissima dalla donna, Futh ritorna su quei passi. Intanto il destino gli ha procurato un dolore simile: la moglie lo ha lasciato e Futh vuole tempo per sé, per pensare a quello che gli è successo. È così conce...

Winner of the 2013 McKitterick PrizeShortlisted for the 2013 East Midlands Book AwardShortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012Shortlisted for New Writer of the Year in the 2012 Specsavers National Book AwardsObserver Book of the Year 2012The Lighthouse begins on a North Sea ferry, on whose blustery outer deck stands Futh, a middle-aged, recently separated ma...

On the hottest day of the year, Ana Sharma and her mum check in to the Hotel Splendid, a place where bells seem to ring all by themselves, jam pots and milk jugs appear on the breakfast table as if by magic, and things go bump in the night. The Hotel Splendid has a problem. When Ana and Sunny meet, they come up with a solution, but one problem leads to another. Meanwhile, the hotel is harbouring an unexpected guest …

Futh, een onlangs gescheiden Engelsman, neemt een veerboot naar het continent voor een wandelvakantie in Duitsland. Zijn bagage bevat herinneringen aan zijn moeder, die hem als kind verliet, aan het rokkenjagen van zijn vader en aan het vreemdgaan van zijn vrouw. Ondertussen probeert Ester, de ongelukkige vrouw van een Duitse hoteleigenaar, via overspel de aandacht van haar man te trekken. Als de wegen van Futh en Ester elkaar kruisen zijn de gevolgen desastreus.

With an abandoned degree behind her and a thirtieth birthday approaching, amateur writer Bonnie Falls moves out of her parents' home into a nearby flat. Her landlady, Sylvia Slythe, takes an interest in Bonnie, encouraging her to finish one of her stories, in which a young woman moves to the seaside, where she comes under strange influences. As summer approaches, Sylvia suggests to Bonnie that, as neither of them has anyone else to go on holiday with, they should go away together – to the ...

Observer Book of the Year 2014Lewis Sullivan, an RE teacher at a secondary school, was approaching retirement when he wondered for the first time whether he ought to have chosen a more dramatic career. He lives in a village in the Midlands, less than a mile from the house in which he grew up. He always imagined living by the sea. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup. He does not want soup. He frequents his second-favourite pub, where he can get hal...

Sometimes, when you open a door or lift a lid, you find exactly what you expected to find: coats in the coat cupboard, bread in the bread bin, toys in the toy box. And sometimes you don't.When Sunny's parents buy an antique shop, they get more than they bargained for: in some of the old furniture, Sunny finds ghosts. Each of the ghosts has an unfulfilled desire, something they never did in their lifetime: Walter wants to learn to read, Violet wants to write a novel, Mary and Elsie ...

A brooding uncle takes an au pair’s passport. Years of tension between a father and a son erupt with violent consequences. A man disappears along a lonely mail route . . . and it has happened before. From the Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Lighthouse comes this uncanny collection of short fiction about the unhomeliness of home: Fractured families, domestic claustrophobia, and the unseen menace of the everyday. With the same emotional tension and tightly controlled prose that...

Having moved from the Fens to the Midlands to the Scottish Borders, Jessie Noon finds herself struggling to leave the past behind.Following a family tragedy, Jessie Noon moved from the Fens to the Midlands and now lives in the Scottish Borders with a cat, a dog and – she is convinced – a ghost in the spare room. Her husband walked out almost a year ago, leaving a note written in steam on the bathroom mirror, and Jessie hasn't seen her son for years. When Jessie meets Robert, a loca...

Since childhood, Sandra Peters has been fascinated by the small, private island of Lieloh, home to the reclusive silent-film star Valerie Swanson. Having dreamed of going to art college, Sandra is now in her forties and working as a receptionist, but she still harbours artistic ambitions. When she sees an advert for a two-week artists' retreat on Lieloh, Sandra sets out on what might be a life-changing journey.

A house is more than just a place to lay your head at night.Sometimes, the walls remember.Gathering ten modern masters of the strange and unsettling, Unquiet Guests sets fire to the blueprints and reimagines the haunted house from the foundations up.From dreamlike visions of an abandoned future mansion to a sentient building grown tired of its owners, these rooms echo with whispers of the disenfranchised and the lost.

Alison Moore's debut collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories, gathered together stories written prior to the publication of her first novel. 'The tales collected in The Pre-War House… pick at psychological scabs in a register both wistful and brutal.' —Anthony Cummins, The Times Literary Supplement 'Moore's writing is surprising and exact and culminates in the title story, the novella which brings the collection to a powerful crescendo' —The Arkansas International 'just as uncompro...