They say trouble comes in threes... Headstrong and organised, Mia is a single mum who wants to fix the world - but the one thing she can't fix is her family. Responsible older brother Will has fled Primrose Bay, unable to forgive and forget after the ultimate betrayal. And Jasmine, no longer the wayward baby sister, is determined to prove to her br...

Five disparate voices inhabit Ali Smith's dreamlike 'Hotel World', set in the luxurious anonymity of the Global Hotel, in an unnamed northern English city. The disembodied yet interconnected characters include Sara, a 19-year-old chambermaid who has recently died at the hotel; her bereaved sister, Clare, who visits the scene of Sara's death; Penny,...

Julia Greenfield has a problem: she's twenty-six years old and she's still a virgin. Sex ought to be easy. People have it all the time! But, without meaning to, she made it through college and into adulthood with her virginity intact. Something's got to change. To re-route herself from her stalled life, Julia travels to spend the summer with her my...

Helen Walsh doesn't believe in fear - it's just a thing invented by men to get all the money and good jobs - and yet she's sinking. Her work as a Private Investigator has dried up, her flat has been repossessed and now some old demons have resurfaced. Not least in the form of her charming but dodgy ex-boyfriend Jay Parker, who shows up with a missi...

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.

Come to the Comfort Food Cafe for sunshine, smiles and plenty of truly scrumptious lemon drizzle cake. For Willow, the ramshackle caf‚ overlooking the beach, together with its warmhearted community, offers friendship as a daily special and always has a hearty welcome on the menu. But when a handsome stranger blows in on a warm spring breeze,...

As a movie location scout, picture-perfect is the name of the game. But her last project literally went up in flames, and her career is on the verge of flaming out. Greer has been given one more chance, if she can find the perfect undiscovered beach hideaway for a big-budget movie. She zeroes in on a sleepy Florida panhandle town called Cypress Key...

Breakfast of Champions is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

'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...

It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come. This audiobook is a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not...

Martin Gilmour and Ben Fitzmaurice have been best friends for 25 years, since their days together at Burtonbury School. They are an unlikely pair: the scholarship boy with the wrong accent and clothes, and the dazzlingly popular, wealthy young aristocrat. But Martin knows no one else can understand the bond they share - and no one else could have k...

A boat washes up on the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper's island. It holds a dead man - and a crying baby. The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision. They break the rules and follow their hearts. What happens next will break yours.

Clarissa Dalloway is civilised - without the ostentation of a socialite, but with enough distinction to attract them to her parties. She finds excess offensive, but surrounds herself with the highest quality and has an abhorrence for anything ugly or awkward. We spend a day with Clarissa as she interacts with servants, her children, her husband, an...

There are three things you should know about Elsie.The first thing is that she's my best friend. The second is that she always knows what to say to make me feel better. And the third thing...might take a little bit more explaining. Eighty-four-year-old Florence has fallen in her flat at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly. As she waits to be rescued,...

The delightful New York Times bestselling author returns with a hilarious novel about one woman's quest to fix up her house . . . and her life. After a political scandal, fledgling lobbyist Dempsey Jo Killebrew is left almost broke, unemployed, and homeless. She reluctantly accepts to refurbish Birdsong, the old family place in Guthrie, Georgia. Bu...

Ella and John have shared a wonderful life for more than 60 years. Now they're on the run from their doctors and middle-aged children, who just want them to go gently into that undignified night of old age. In their trusty camper van, the pair embark on a forbidden vacation of rediscovery along Route 66. Though time is catching up with them, Ella i...

Peter is 44, prosperous, childless, a player in the NY contemporary art dealing scene. He has been married to Rebecca for close on 20 years. Their marriage is sound. But when Mizzy, Rebecca's brother, comes to stay, his world is turned upside down. Returning to their flat, Peter sees Rebecca's outline in the shower. But when he opens the shower doo...

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has buil...

After an impulsive affair with his student sours, David Lurie retreats disgraced to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power is shifting in South Africa. He and Lucy become victims of a disturbing attack whic...

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...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Swallowing Geography by Deborah Levy, read by Gabrielle Glaister. Like her namesake Jack Kerouac, J.K. is always on the road, travelling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcase. From J.K.'s irreverent, ironic perspective, Levy charts a new, dizzying, end-of-the-century world of shifting boundaries and di...