In 1914, when Nicandra is eight, all is well in the grand Irish estate, Deer Forest. Maman is beautiful and adored. Dada, silent and small, mooches contendedly around the stables. Aunt Tossie, of the giant heart and bosom, is widowed but looks splendid in weeds. The butler, the groom, the landsteward, the maids, the men - each as a place and knows it. Then, astonishingly, the perfect surface is shattered; Maman does something too dreadful ever to be spoken of.
'What next? Who to love?' asks Nicaranda. And through her growing up and marriage her answer is to swamp those around her with...

Every full moon, a Ripper runs amok on the streets of Brentford. Masters Simon and Keith Innes set out to catch the killer under the disturbing guidance of the repellently delightful sleuth, Mrs. Bradley. Full of the very British eccentric goings-on that mark the popular tales of Gladys Mitchell, this shows her at her mordant and morbid best.

In this, her first novel, Angela Carter tells a tale of shattered beauty and male camaraderie.

Edmund Carr is at sea in more ways than one. An eminent journalist and self-made man, he has recently discovered that he has only a short time to live. Leaving his job on a Fleet Street paper, he takes a passage on a cruise ship where he knows that Laura, a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires, will be a fellow passenger. Exhilarated by the distant vista of exotic islands never to be visited and his conversations with Laura, Edmund finds himself rethinking all his values.
A voyage on many levels, those long purposeless days at sea find Edumnd relinquishing the past as...

Joseph - a 22-year-old self-styled nihilist in search of meaning, found releasing a badger from a zoo, seducing his best friend's mother, dancing at a Dionysic revel and spending his days in a mortuary - is the anti-hero at the heart of this novel.

Grace Fairfax lives with her dull, conventional husband Tom in a grey manufacturing town in the north of England. At thirty-four she finds that her external life of dreary routine fails to match up to her lush, wistful and dreamy internal life. Norah, her energetic and chaotic friend, is equally settled in her own marriage to an irritable university professor.

Then Hugh Miller and his sister Claire descend upon the quiet town. On all four, the hypnotic charm of these two visitors exerts an enchanting spell. And after their departure, life - having been violently disrupted - will never be...

The classic, beloved children's novel about the sour Mary Lennox who is sent from India as an orphan to live at her uncle Archibald Craven's isolated manor. After hearing stories of a locked garden and discovering the secret key, Mary begins her exploration of the deserted gardens. Mary befriends her sickly cousin Colin and a local boy Dickon whom she shares the secret of the garden. Together they bring life back to the garden and change their lives forever.
A collection that will be coveted by children and adults alike, this list is the best in children's literature, curated by...

Macaulay's most sophisticated novel explores the spiritual dilemmas of the postwar world. One of the most evocative novels of London immediately after the Second World War.

This volume contains 15 studies on movements of religious reform and the literary conventions of the period from 1491 to 1591. It concentrates on the life and writing of Ignatius Loyola and the writings of John of the Cross.

Philosophy in the medieval Latin West before 1200 is often thought to have been dominated by Platonism. The articles in this volume question this view, by cataloguing, describing and investigating the tradition of Aristotelian logic during this period, and examining its influence.