Humphrey and Ailsa meet as children by a grey, northern sea. Humphrey is quiet, serious - and will in time explore the sea's mysteries; Ailsa is angry, a freckled cobra ready to strike. Yet they fascinate one another and when they meet again years later they fall briefly - and disastrously - in love.

Anna is a child of special, unknowable qualities. She is happy, always willing to smile at the world around her, but she also presents profound challenges. For her mother Jess, still in her early 20s, her arrival will prove life-transforming. Over the course of decades, in ways large and small, Anna will affect the lives and loves of those around her. While Anna herself will remain largely unaltered by the passing years, she will live through a period of dramatic change, her journey illuminating our shifting attitudes towards motherhood, responsibility and the way we care for one another.

A beautifully written and deeply personal book on the jigsaw and the part it plays in the patchwork of its distinguished author's life. A mix of memoir, jigsaw history and the strange delights of puzzling

Loosely based on Drabble's own experiences, a compelling, beautifully written novel following three generations of women in one family

An honest and moving portrait of the everyday messiness of life, and the complications of love

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, an intimate novel about human desire against the backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the Sixties

An award-winning novel about the perils of motherhood in a failing healthcare system and a woman's fight against the social stigma of the Sixties

The first in a trilogy, this startling novel charts the radical change in Britain during the Eighties through the eyes of three women