Taking tea is one of the quintessentially English occasions. Of interest to tea drinkers, this Edwardian-style book captures the essence of this traditional British pastime, and provides us with the expertise on the ceremony as well as the recipes. It also features stories about the legendary afternoon teas at the Ritz Hotel.

In this collection of short stories, Helen Simpson explores the multiplicity and variety of London life through the experiences of women at work, at home and on holiday.

In this collection of short stories, Helen Simpson explores the spaces we inhabit - both physical and mental - and delves into the relationships between change, memory and experience, exposing the gulf dividing youth and middle age and the line between life and death.

Helen Simpson offers acute portraits of lives in transition: of changes for the better, lives stalled and in freefall; of love, loss, and sudden revelations. Warm and funny, the stories are also threaded with a sense of anxiety and fear: of growing old, of commitment, and, most worryingly, of the growing threat to the environment.

These are funny, heartfelt, and sensuous stories that deal with the full stretch, from birth to death and everything in between.

This second collection of short stories by the author of the prize-winning Four Bare Legs in a Bed, recently nominated as one of Granta magazine's Best Young British Novelists, continues to explore ideas of independence, solitude, marriage, sex and babies.