Today's pre-eminent author for children is a Fellow of All Souls. Now she turns her scholarly attention to the religious outsider, social disaster, celebrity preacher, establishment darling,... read more
A retired Vietnam veteran receives a package in the post that shows him that he has more to do before he is done with the past. A desert crossing blurs with his inner journey - a very fine n... read more
A cerebral and determined young woman at Harvard vigorously explores the gaps between life and art: an entertaining and lively sequel to Batuman's wonderful The Idiot.
Riveting stories of projects that killed their architect, from a spire in C17th France to a theatre in 1920s' Washington. A marvellously Goreyesque subject.
An original and entertaining book on the smoke and mirrors of the modern consumer's world - case studies that take apart our ideas of the real and the fake, of appearance and deception.
Ruthlessly funny memoir of working front of house: the great deception of ease, of luxe, calme et volupte , of lamplight and conversation, while, behind the swing doors, rages a very differe... read more
This debut novel, in which a woman returns from a voyage to the deep sea strangely altered, is a slippery marriage of the mundane and the uncanny. Structured around the zones of the ocean - ... read more
This delightful slim volume consists of Newcomb's watercolours of still lives around the house & garden, accompanied by a few lines from Blackburn, her indefatigable Suffolk neighbour.
A powerful debut novel set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles: a young woman embarks on an affair with a married man, and - inevitably - there are consequences, sharpened by the layerin... read more
A second collection. His novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was a bestseller and his first collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds won the TS Eliot prize.
A very clever debut from a distinguished hand in the art world: a Cambridge don rather stuck in his ways is repelled by an outbreak of modern art in his quad. Wafted on a cloud of academic d... read more
A new novel by the author of The Heavens which recalls Usula le Guin's flawed Utopia in which one person's constant suffering pays for the perpetual bliss of all others.
A day in the life of two women navigating grief and love, isolation and self-determination: a first and very intelligent novel from the author of Notes to Self.
A New York housewife believes that the grotesque protagonist of her husband's novel is based on her. The ensuing paranoic spiral is gripping enough to satisfy any Hitchcock fan...
Mouse wanders through his wood visiting friends as the seasons unfurl; flaps for little fingers reveal the various cosy interiors of his friends' houses, filled with teapots, colourful count... read more
The story of Gaia, the Greek goddess who created the earth and all of nature, whose work is threatened by the ambitions and jealousies of the other gods. Greenberg has won several prizes for... read more
A memorable and delightful old woman - who could have been a fifth columnist in Montypython's Hell's Grannies - takes on the education of an edgy granddaughter.
Subtle and slim volume of essays by a neurologist who champions the cross-fertilisation of different approaches - anatomical, electrical, chemical, etc.
A Crimean War hero's divorce & remarriage causes two lines of descendants, who meet up again one summer in Devon in the 1970s. Ructions ensue. Shrewdly observed and compelling.