Kategoria BISAC: Fiction >> World Literature - England - 21st Century

A hilarious and utterly original novel about mothers, daughters, and love, by the author of Life After Life.

On a weather-beaten island off the coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother, Nora, take refuge in the large, mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear--like who her real father was. Effie tells various versions of her life at college, where in fact she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom Klingons...

Following the death of Peter Hansome, his wife Bridget is contacted by Frances Slater, her late-husband's mistress. Though the two are from opposite sides of London and meet under the least desirable circumstances, the women become close friends. In a subtly wrought turn of events, Bridget and Frances discover that they have in common what is important to them most: their parallel memories of Peter, killed in a car accident, and the shared reality of his spirit form, haunting them still. A gracefully tuned feat of the imagination, Salley Vickers's novel is a rare celebration of life's most...

The National Bestseller

The sudden trace of a disturbing, forgotten aroma compels Stephen Wheatley to return to the site of a dimly remembered but troubling childhood summer in wartime London. As he pieces together his scattered memories, we are brought back to a quiet, suburban street where two boys--Keith and his sidekick, Stephen--are engaged in their own version of the war effort: spying on the neighbors, recording their movements, and ferreting out their secrets. But when Keith utters six shocking words, the boy's game of espionage takes a sinister and unintended turn,...

Alan Bennett's extraordinary ear for dialogue and sharpness of perception have made him a master storyteller. In "Father Father Burning Bright" he writes with tragicomic insight about a son's vigil at his father's deathbed where their lifelong battle continues to the end. "The Laying on of Hands," a brilliantly funny satire, describes a society memorial service for a rather special masseur who died tragically young; and in "Miss Fozzard Finds her Feet," a lonely, unmarried department store clerk discovers there's more to life than looking after her brother through her only indulgence,...

Thomas Bunting while neglecting his philosophy Ph.D., still unfinished after seven years, is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork--a vast atheistic project to be titled The Book Against God. In despair over his failed academic career and failing marriage, Bunting is also enraged to the point of near lunacy by his parents' religiousness. When his father, a beloved parish priest, suddenly falls ill, Bunting returns to the Northern village of his childhood. Bunting's hopes that this visit might enable him to finally talk honestly with his parents and sort out his wayward...

Many years ago, Mr. Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction that grew to be an astonishing international bestseller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself badly out of touch with the modern world. He decides to take a holiday and comes to the historic village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date. But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers around him. As he comes to know his neighbors better, Mr. Golightly begins to...

Double Vision from Pat Barker, a gripping novel about the effects of violence on the journalists and artists who have dedicated themselves to representing it

In the aftermath of September 11, reeling from the effects of reporting from New York City, two British journalists, a writer, Stephen Sharkey, and a photographer, Ben Frobisher, part ways. Stephen, facing the almost simultaneous discovery that his wife is having an affair, returns to England shattered; he divorces and quits his job. Ben returns to his vocation. He follows the war on terror to Afghanistan and is...

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England's irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite...

"A spot of extramarital nookie with a close neighbor is one thing. We're all grown-ups here. But selling a rare-to-the-market mid-Victorian house -- not merely a house but our children's ancestral family home -- on a communal garden, the sort of house that a banker would trample over his own grandmother to spend his bonus on -- is another thing entirely. It's wrong."

Meet Mimi. Mimi may "have it all" -- the house, the children, the part-time vanity job, the skinny jeans, the feng shui guru -- but life chez Fleming is...

From one of the sharpest observers of the modern scene comes this witty, intelligent, and irresistible novel in the tradition of Gosford Park and Snobs.

Anthony Anscombe has everything he could ever want: an exquisite family estate, enviable social standing, and a desirable inheritance. But Anthony still has an aching desire for one thing: the perfect match. Running headlong into marriage is Anthony's forte . . . and his greatest weakness. As he surveys his beautiful house in the English countryside, Anthony has the distinct feeling that he's...

When Rosa Lane, a promising young journalist, impulsively hits the send button on an email to her boss saying "I quit," so begins her pursuit of enlightenment in the jungles of cutthroat London. As she embarks upon her quest for a sense of purpose, she is deceived by her lover, surprised by her friends, turned out by her roommate, threatened by her bank manager, picked over by prospective employers, and tormented by all the bizarre expectations of the modern world. An erudite and darkly comic novel, brimming with lacerating wit and compassion, Inglorious is a truly engrossing...

From the bestselling author of What Was Lost comes a spirited literary mystery about a television anchorman's search for the truth about the disappearances that surround him

Frank Allcroft, a television news anchor in his hometown (where he reports on hard-hitting events, like the opening of canine gyms for overweight pets), is on the verge of a mid-life crisis. Beneath his famously corny on-screen persona, Frank is haunted by loss: the mysterious hit-and-run that killed his predecessor and friend, Phil, and the ongoing demolition of his architect father's monumental...

Far from London's crime and pollution, Hanmouth's wealthier residents live in picturesque, heavily mortgaged cottages in the center of a town packed with artisanal cheese shops and antiques stores. They're reminded of the town's less desirable outskirts with their grim, flimsy housing stock and chain stores only when their neighbors have the presumption to claim also to live in Hanmouth.

When an eight-year-old girl from the outer area goes missing, England's eyes suddenly turn toward the sleepy town with a curiosity as piercing and unblinking as the closed-circuit security cameras that...