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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

'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...

In this prescient novel, Daphne du Maurier explores the implications of leaving Europe for a political, economic and military...

When Sarah Burton returns to her hometown as headmistress she is full of ambition, determined to create a great school and to...

Dedmayne Rectory is quietly decaying, its striped chintz and darkened rooms are a bastion of outmoded Victorian values. Here Mary...

It is a summer's day in 1946. The English village of Wealding is no longer troubled by distant sirens, yet the rustling coils of...

Behind this rather prim title lies the hilarious fictional diary of a disaster-prone lady of the 1930s, and her attempts to keep...

Vivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh...

Stevie's alter ego Pompey is young, in love and working as a secretary for the magnificent Sir Phoebus Ullwater. In between...

The daughter of a Welsh gypsy and a crazy bee-keeper, Hazel Woodus is happiest living in her forest cottage in the remote...

As the effects of the war raging in Europe begins to be felt at home in London, Monica Dickens decides to do her bit and to...

It is wartime in Barsetshire, and so much has changed. Belier's Priory is now a hospital for wounded soldiers, and Sir Harry and...

It is 1945. When peace breaks out at last, familiar wartime routines are interrupted, and the residents of Barsetshire seem as...