General

These choice selections from Honoré de Balzac's Droll Stories offer a lively and lusty portrait of sixteenth-century French life and manners. Told in the tradition of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Rabelais, they allegedly originated in manuscripts from the abbeys of Touraine. Originally published in three ...

Marie Darrieussecq tells the story of a single day in the life of a mother and her three grown-up daughters. Now scattered between the South of France and Buenos Aires, all four women are still connected by an incident from their past - a terrible event that the story gradually reveals . . .

An atmospheric and resonant novel that holds up a light to the heart's choices and the ensuing consequences. If you love Elizabeth Gilbert and Kate Morton you will devour this book.

The debut novel of abduction and slavery set in 17th century Iceland and North Africa by Sunday Times bestselling author and broadcaster Sally Magnusson. Selected for the Zoe Ball ITV Book Club and BBC Radio 2 Book Club.

The exquisitely wrought and thrillingly gripping second novel set during the time of the Black Death from Minette Walters.

From the author of RIVERS OF LONDON - the SUNDAY TIMES bestselling PC Peter Grant series returns with something dark south of the river...

The extraordinary, prescient NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling novel.

An American tries to escape her marriage to a French aristocrat in the title story of this collection. Additional tales include "Autres Temps …," "The Long Run," and "The Triumph of Night."

Banned in Britain for over a decade because of its frank treatment of sexual love, D. H. Lawrence's controversial story traces three generations of a farming family. Spanning the period from 1840 to 1905, the novel portrays the effects of Britain's industrial revolution on the Brangwen clan, as their ...

The latest novel in Alexander McCall Smith's much-loved Isabel Dalhousie series.

It takes a lot to get under the skin of Cornelius 'Fatty O'Leary, but then there is a lot of skin to get under.

Roy Strang is engaged in a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. But behind this world lies another: the world of Roy's bizarre family, the Scottish housing scheme in which he grew up, his mundane job, a disastrous emigration to Africa, and his youthful life of brutality with a gang of soccer casuals.

He is Dr Wilbur Daffodil-II Swain and Slapstick or Lonesome No More! is his story - one of monstrous twins, orgies, revenge, golf, utopian schemes, and very little tooth brushing. In this post-apocalyptic black comedy - dedicated to Laurel and Hardy - Vonnegut is at his most hilarious, grotesque, and personal.

The first novel in William Burroughs' anarchic 'Cut-Up Trilogy'.

A controversial reworking of well-trodden American myth by the author of 'Naked Lunch'.

The latest novel in Alexander McCall Smith's much-loved Isabel Dalhousie series, which have sold over 1.7m copies

Rotherweird, a place of 'special and dangerous properties' (Hilary Mantel), has resumed its abnormal normality after a happy ending to the travails of summer.

"Justine" was the Marquis de Sade's firs novella, written in 177, whilst imprisoned for two weeks in the Bastille. It shows the battle of virtue versus vice, where earning your keep takes on fresh connotations, and a title lady holds a lifetime of illicit secrets.

Following William Stoner from his decision to quit his agriculture degree in order to study English, through his marriage and fatherhood, to the later stages of his teaching career, John Williams brings to the fore the pursuit of love and fulfilment characteristic of an individual life.

Read F Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of love, money, revenge and betrayal set in Jazz Age America. In shimmering prose, Fitzgerald shows Gatsby pursue his dream to its tragic conclusion in one of the 20th century's true contenders for the title of 'Great American Novel'.