The soldier returns from the front to the three women who love him. His wife, Kitty, with her cold, moonlight beauty, and his...

An orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena and an artist's servant girl in seventeenth-century...

'"You know,'"Midge began, and paused. She was rather taken aback, and could not at once think of anything to say. "Perhaps...

When Rainclouds Gather: Escaping South Africa and his troubled past, Makehaya crosses the border to Botswana, in the hope of...

The Group follows eight graduates from exclusive Vassar College as they find love and heartbreak, forge careers, gossip and party...

Life is not quite a fairytale for poor Viola. Left penniless, the young widow is forced to live with her late husband s family in...

In Muriel Spark's fantastic first novel, the only things that aren't ambiguous are her matchless originality and glittering...

Jack Boughton - prodigal son - has been gone twenty years. He returns home seeking refuge and to make peace with the past. A bad...

Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband is in love with another woman. The fact that this woman has a...

In affairs of the heart the race is not necessarily won by the swift or the fair.

Imogen, the beautiful and much younger wife...

From her lookout on the first floor, Ginny watches and waits for her younger sister to return to the crumbling mansion that was...

The Daylight and the Dust is the most comprehensive selection of Janet Frame's stories ever published, taken from the four...

Since childhood, Claude Wheeler has believed that ‘something splendid’ would restore the faith he had lost in modern life and the...

It is 1939, the last summer before the outbreak of war. French actress Angele Maury abandons a group of friends travelling...

Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient...

A rich and suggestive work which contrasts the middle-aged disillusion of Professor St Peter with his memories of his favourite...

Willa Cather's best known novel; a narrative that recounts a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert.

In...

Edith Wharton (1862-1937), the grande dame of American literature, was also a subtle and spirited critic of its...

In the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for - and in on - each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy...

Mere Marie-Helene once turned her back on life, sealing up her heart in order to devote herself to God. Now the formidable Mother...

Two sisters: Madeleine and Dinah. One husband: Rickie Masters. For many years now, Dinah, exotic and sensual, has conducted a...

Mrs Lippincote's house, with its mahogany furniture and yellowing photographs, stands as a reminder of all the certainties that...

A finely nuanced exploration of responsibility, snobbery and culture clash from one of the twentieth century's finest...

A diary for her innermost thoughts, a china ornament, a ten-shilling note, and a roll of flame-coloured silk for her first...

Art, reality and the strange ways the two imitate one another are at the core of Muriel Spark's delightful Loitering with Intent,...

One October evening five London couples gather for a dinner party, enjoying ‘the pheasant (flambe in cognac as it is)’ and...

Under his railway arch in Loughborough Junction, South London, Robert Sutton is taking leave of a lifetime of hard work. His...

Frank Wentworth, Perpetual Curate of St Roque’s, has basked in the popularity of Carlingford, beloved in the gracious homes of...

In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son: ‘I told you last night that I might...

'The iron of the bridge felt hot under my hand. The sun had been upon it all day. Gripping hard with my hands I lifted myself on...