Generous-hearted Benny and the elfin Eve Malone have been best friends throughout their childhoods in sleepy Knockglen. When they both go to study in Dublin, they meet a circle of friends that includes handsome Jack Foley and the selfish and beautiful Nan Mahon, whose ambition will drag them all into trouble. As Knockglen is surprised into new life...

A decade and a half has passed since Grace was locked up, at the age of 16, for the cold-blooded murders of her employer and his lover. Her alleged accomplice was hanged in 1843. Sixteen years on, Grace claims to have no memory of the event. Dr Simon Jordan attempts to uncover the truth.

Paula Spencer struggles to reclaim her dignity after marriage to an abusive husband and a worsening drinking problem. She recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she had as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her feeling powerless.

In 1941 Captain Antonio Corelli is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia. It isn't long before he is involved in a heated affair with Pelagia, a local girl, despite her engagement to a young fisherman, Mandras, who has gone off to join Greek partisans. Love is complicated enough in wartime, even when the lovers are on the same side, but as Core...

John Hamilton didn't want children with his wife, but that was because he had led a secret life for 20 years, in the shape of a mistress and a 19 year-old daughter. Now, following a car crash which has left him in a vegetative state, the three women that he deceived decide his fate.

When her mother dies, Marian realises she has left it too late to ask the crucial questions about the identity of her own father, 'lost in the War'. Marian's search takes her to the remote and close-knit community of St. Ives, where fisherfolk and artists have coexisted for many years, and where she learns of a tragedy involving her father.

Floral designer Larry and his feisty young wife, Dorrie, spend their honeymoon in England. At Hampton Court Larry discovers a new passion for mazes. Perhaps his ever-growing obsession with their secrets will help him find a way through the bewilderment deepening about him as, through twenty years and two failed marriages, he endeavours to understan...

Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university. Timid Vice-Chancellors pale before his threats of disruption and reactionary colleagues are crushed beneath his merciless Marxist logic. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Malcolm Bradbury. Copyright Malcolm Bradbury 1975...

When Howard Baker dies in a car crash, he finds himself transported to heaven, where he soon starts to become a very important person and a good friend of God.

The human voices of the story are those of the BBC in the first years of the Second World War when the Concert Hall was turned into a dormitory for both sexes. The whole building became a target for enemy bombers, and in the BBC as elsewhere, some had to fail and some had to die.

Frayn's 1967 novel about Fleet Street portrays a newspaper world long since gone. Stuck in a sleepy newspaper department, covering nature notes and crosswords, Dyson dreams of liberation and recognition. When a chance occurs to appear on TV, he eagerly prepares to embrace a celebrity lifestyle.

Harry Silver has it all. A successful job in TV, a gorgeous wife, a lovely child. And in one moment of madness, he chucks it all away. This is the story of how he comes to terms with his mistakes and achieves a degree of self-respect whilst bringing up his son alone. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE.

Set in the summer of 1939 on the day of the annual village pageant at Pointz Hall, the novel weaves together the musings of several disparate characters and their reactions to the imminence of the Second World War, which provides the novel with its dark undercurrent. Before the book was published in the spring of 1941, Virginia Woolf had taken her...

Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob Flanders first appears as a child playing by the seaside. The novel follows his progress to school, Cambridge, London, Paris, Italy, Greece and to hi...

'The Waves', more than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels, conveys the complexities of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, 'The Waves' follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age. The novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that conveys the aspirations, triumphs and regrets of her characte...

Colin is in many ways an ideal citizen. A responsible job for the council, visits to his aged mother Norah, and cooking and shopping for her. But no-one knows about his other - much more secret - life that involves a garden shed, a circus acrobat, and a much-adored three-year-old charmer.

Adrian Mole is now thirty and three-quarters. An accidental celebrity, with a spreading bald patch, despairing of family values, Mole is still worrying: Is Viagra cheating? Why won't the BBC produce his serial killer comedy 'White Van'? Mole chronicles the closing years of the 20th century with slanderous abandon.

Set in London during and just after the Second World War, the love affair between novelist Maurice Bendix and his married lover, Sarah Miles, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. Two years later a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy. Maurice hires a private detective to follow Sarah and slowly his love for her tu...

'Five Quarters of the Orange' revolves around a recipe book, continuing the theme of culinary intrigue begun in 'Chocolat' and 'Blackberry Wine'. Framboise returns to the village where she grew up during wartime and, with the help of the recipes scribbled in her mother's album, opens up a small restaurant. Whilst immersing herself once again in the...

A new generation has arrived to divide the Forsyte clan with society scandals and conflicting passions. Set in the years following the First World War, the story moves to Soames Forsyte's daughter Fleur. She is now married to Michael Mont, but when her old love Jon returns after seven years, desire is rekindled and loyalties begin to divide.

After the death of his estranged wife, Quoyle's fortunes begin to change when his long lost Aunt Agnes convinces him to head north to his ancestral home on the coast of Newfoundland with his daughter Bunny. In the small coastal village of Killick-Claw Quoyle lands a job as a reporter for the local newspaper. He reports on the shipping news as he si...