Often hilarious and certainly astonishing, this is the novelist's memoir of growing up in Sheffield in the 1950s. His father, an insecure bully, adopted a toupée, which functioned as an ins... read more
Shortlisted for both the Women's Fiction Prize (2022) and the Booker (2021), this stirring novel pulls together the lives of a fictional female aviator in the 1950s aiming to circumnavigate ... read more
A brilliant, perky novella about the foibles of Professor Timofey Pnin, an eccentric Russian teacher at a school in New England. 'Pninian' should really be part of our daily vocabulary; it w... read more
This fictionalised account of his life was one of the last things Kazantzakis wrote before his death. A vivid picture of his childhood in Crete, still occupied by the Ottoman Turks, develops... read more
"...It was on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs Protheroe's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim...". Every adult and every childs needs to have Thomas's words and image... read more
A neglected Irish girl is fostered out to her mother's sister for the summer in this perfect, understated story. Almost too short even to be called a novella. Keegan is short-listed for this... read more
The Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins descends on seventeen-century Essex, where he finds himself oddly fascinated by a 'peculiar' young woman. A historical novel with real bite, which rec... read more
Susanna, a stylish self-made woman and arch-observer of her Viennese neighbours, has secrets of her own to hide in the years before WWI. A more grown-up and melancholic novel than Ibbotson's... read more