'Hugely entertaining' Telegraph 'She's such a skilful storyteller who vividly dramatises our lives with wit, wisdom and compassion' BERNARDINE EVARISTO 'I revelled in The Three Graces - such an intriguing cast, so convincingly presented, and a narrative that continually surprises' PENELOPE LIVELY 'A brilliant piece of storytelling... it should be the book everybody's reading this summer' ANDREW O'HAGAN 'Gorgeous and generous... rich with characters and suffused with sunlight' LISSA EVANS When Enzo shoots an illegal migrant from his bedroom one night, it triggers a series of events that embroil old and young, rich and poor, native and foreign. His elderly neighbours Ruth, Diana and Marta are three friends who have retired to Tuscany. Ruth's favourite grandson Olly is about to get married from her idyllic hillside farmhouse; however, the bride, Tania, seems curiously unengaged by anything but vlogging as a social media influencer. Marta, preparing to give the annual music recital sponsored by a Russian oligarch in hiding from Putin, is increasingly unwell, and her grandson, Xan, is full of resentment at the inequalities he encounters. Diana is nursing her husband, Lord Evenlode, who is living with dementia, and looking back over a long and troubled marriage. Over two weeks in May, all these characters will face challenging choices as they grapple with their own past and with present dangers. For although the Tuscan spring looks as ravishing as a Renaissance painting, the realities of modern life make it harder and harder to believe that there is more that unites us than what keeps us apart. Brilliant, enthralling, funny and generous, this is an exploration of the indomitable human heart.

How do we keep our kids close while cultivating the confidence they'll need to grow up? How do we navigate the inevitable dips, divides, and potholes? Where do we find the strength, self-awareness, and wisdom that amount to a path forward? Despite the parenting opportunities in the tween years, we often spend time focused on academics and the social concerns of elementary school then quickly pivot to worries about safety, drugs, sex and the rebellious behavioral issues of the teen years. We think we're connecting but we're not. We miss the neurological explosion that is taking place before us as tweens experience four significant changes that shake them (and us) to their core. - Their brains are changing. - They feel and experience emotions they do not recognize. - They're hyperaware of themselves. - They do not know how to express themselves. Most importantly, parents still have a "seat at the table" to make positive impressions on their tweens as they prepare them for the teenage years.

'She's such a skilful storyteller who vividly dramatises our lives with wit, wisdom and compassion' Bernardine Evaristo When Enzo shoots an illegal migrant from his bedroom one night, it triggers a series of events that embroil old and young, rich and poor, native and foreign. His elderly neighbours Ruth, Diana and Marta are three friends who have retired to Tuscany. Ruth's favourite grandson Olly is about to get married from her idyllic hillside farmhouse; however, the bride, Tania, seems curiously unengaged by anything but vlogging as a social media influencer. Marta, preparing to give the annual music recital sponsored by a Russian oligarch in hiding from Putin, is increasingly unwell, and her grandson, Xan, is full of resentment at the inequalities he encounters. nursing her husband, Lord Evenlode, who is living with dementia, and looking back over a long and troubled marriage. Over two weeks in May, all these characters will face challenging choices as they grapple with their own past and with present dangers. For although the Tuscan spring looks as ravishing as a Renaissance painting, the realities of modern life make it harder and harder to believe that there is more that unites us than what keeps us apart. Brilliant, enthralling, funny and generous, this is an exploration of the indomitable human heart.

Brilliantly funny, terrifying, tender and sharp: the best short stories to come out of lockdown. A vibrant collection of established and emerging authors, including A L Kennedy, Helen Simpson, Alison Moore whose novel The Lighthouse was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Amanda Huggins (winner of the Colm Toibin short story award), Richard Lambert shortlisted for The Sunday Times EFG award, Stephen S. Thomson author of Toy Soldiers and Sitting in Limbo for BBC 1 . Introduction by Amanda Craig, long listed for the Women's prize for Fiction 2021. '18 well-chosen stories, loosely based on the idea of solitude, explore loss, loneliness and love, and head from the wilds of the Northern Rockies with an ailing father and an intrepid grieving daughter (Leadfall by D. W. Wilson) to the cable-tangled, neon-jagged streets of Bangkok where, in Stephen Thomas's titular story, a traveller watches the world and thinks the setting is strange to her, but her thoughts are inescapably familiar.'DAILY MAIL

A GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDARD, SUNDAY TIMES AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR. ' A very good read indeed' Matt Haig 'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight 'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded. Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low? What is the mystery surrounding their unappealing new home? The beauty of the landscape is ravishing, yet it conceals a dark side involving poverty, revenge, abuse and violence which will rise up to threaten them. Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless knows a different side to country life, as both a Health Visitor and a sheep farmer's wife; and when Lottie's innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another. At the end of their year, the lives of all will be changed for ever. A suspenseful black comedy, this is a rich, compassionate and enthralling novel in its depiction of the English countryside, and the potentially lethal interplay between money and marriage.

'An excellent and entertaining read' Daily Mail 'A love story and political comment, a defence of the art of fiction, a masterpiece' Evening Standard 'Rich and splendid...viciously funny and a rip-roaring read' Elle A Vicious Circle exposes the corruption of London's journalistic circuit, the horrors of our hospitals and slums, and the transformations caused by motherhood. Gripping, tender and fiercely funny, it has been instantly recognised as a modern classic about the way we live now.

So you have a Tween! What now? Dr. Amanda Craig knows what it's like to watch your child go from sweet elementary student to moody tween in the span of just a few years and she's here to help navigate you through it! How do we keep our kids close while cultivating the confidence they'll need to grow up? How do we navigate the inevitable dips, divides, and potholes? Where do we find the strength, self-awareness, and wisdom that amount to a path forward? Despite the parenting opportunities in the tween years, we often spend time focused on academics and the social concerns of elementary school then quickly pivot to worries about safety, drugs, sex and the rebellious behavioral issues of the teen years. We think we're connecting but we're not. We miss the neurological explosion that is taking place before us as tweens experience four significant changes that shake them (and us) to their core. - Their brains are changing. - They feel and experience emotions they do not recognize. - They're hyperaware of themselves. - They do not know how to express themselves. Most importantly, parents still have a "seat at the table" to make positive impressions on their tweens as they prepare them for the teenage years.

'This is a life-affirming read - take it on holiday, but leave the rest of the party at home' The Times 'An intelligent and satisfying romantic comedy' Women and Home At the Casa Luna, friends and relations of the Noble family gather for fortnight's holiday in the enchanted Italian hills. Daniel, an American academic, is under pressure to marry Ellen, a witty and successful shoe designer. Hermani, doctor and single mother, is intrigued by Ivo - trickster, charmer, critic - the man Ellen most loathes in the world. Polly, meanwhile, hopes her domineering mother-in-law will help transform her feral children and give her some much-needed time alone with her workaholic husband. But the Casa Luna is a place where strange things happen, and anyone who lives there risks unexpected joys and sorrows...

At eighteen, Emma Kenward runs away from her dull Sloane home to try her luck as a painter in Tuscany. Waspish, idealistic and far too clever for her own good, she is at the awkward age when women choose their futures - and their identities. Once in Italy, Emma blossoms and is taken up by a a mixture of characters including the local Contessa; Sylvia, her volatile American mentor; Dr Evenlode, an Oxford don she'd hoped never to see again; and Lucio, a seductive and anarchic young Italian, as interested in Emma's body as in her mind. Santorno, however, is not merely a picturesque town set in the golden landscape of the Tuscan countryside. Hidden among the malicious tongues of the provincial gossips and the walls of the mysterious Palazzo Felici lie secrets, long buried, but not forgotten. Emma, ever curious, delves deep and discovers the truth about her new world, her old self - and a gruesome murder.

Thirty-nine, divorced, jobless: Benedick Hunter is going nowhere, heading in the exact opposite direction he expected. So when he comes across a children's book that his mother, Laura, wrote, he decides that her life and work - haunting stories replete with sinister woods, wicked witches and brave girls who battle giants - hold the key to finding out why his own life is such a mess. Setting out to discover why Laura killed herself when he was six, Benedick travels to the US. As he grows more obsessed with what happened to his mother, Benedick enters into a dark wood - one that is both hilariously real and terrifyingly psychological. Dark humorous and inventive, In a Dark Wood casts light on the nature of depression, genius and of the healing power of storytelling.

Knotshead is a school catering for the children of the rich, famous, liberal - and deluded. With its progressive curriculum, complacent staff and beautiful grounds, it looks like Paradise. But the clever, the odd and the bookish are relentlessly persecuted as pupils make their own rules in a bubble of privilege and prejudice. When Alice, the Headmaster's intellectual step-daughter, and the much-expelled American millionaire Winthrop T Sheen join forces against the school bully, Grub Viner, a gifted pianist and school "joker", has to choose between love and loyalty, and black comedy escalates to murder.

A Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Daily Mail and Financial Times Best Book of 2020 Pick 'A highly enjoyable story about female resilience and finding fulfilment on your own terms' Sunday Times 'An irresistible summer read' Guardian Book of the Day 'A typically sharp and hugely satisfying page-turner' Daily Mail She's such a skilful storyteller' Bernardine Evaristo When Hannah is invited into the First-Class carriage of the London to Penzance train by Jinni, she walks into a spider's web. Now a poor young single mother, Hannah once escaped Cornwall to go to university. But once she married Jake and had his child, her dreams were crushed into bitter disillusion. Her husband has left her for Eve, rich and childless, and Hannah has been surviving by becoming a cleaner in London. Jinni is equally angry and bitter, and in the course of their journey the two women agree to murder each other's husbands. After all, they are strangers on a train - who could possibly connect them? But when Hannah goes to Jinni's husband's home the next night, she finds Stan, a huge, hairy, ugly drunk who has his own problems - not least the care of a half-ruined house and garden. He claims Jinni is a very different person to the one who has persuaded Hannah to commit a terrible crime. Who is telling the truth - and who is the real victim? Praise for Amanda Craig 'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight 'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry 'Amanda Craig is one of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists now working in Britain' Alison Lurie

In her delightful reimagining of A Midsummer's Night Dream," "Amanda Craig slyly serves up a witty cross-cultural farce, a modern-day tale of love and lies set against the magical landscape of Tuscany.
When Theo, a workaholic lawyer, his English wife Polly, and their two children rent an idyllic Italian villa, they expect a relaxing summer holiday together. Polly, with her loved ones' romantic interests at heart, has invited an eccentric mix of friends and family along--including three eligible bachelors, a former model, an Indian-British divorcee with a young son, and her own appalling mother-in-law. They soon discover the Casa Luna is a strange, enchanted place where people find their heart's desire--but at a price. Everyone falls in love, though not with the people they expect, and the results are surprising and hilarious.

'She's such a skilful storyteller who vividly dramatises our lives with wit, wisdom and compassion' Bernardine Evaristo 'Do you know why lifeboats have an axe in them?' 'To chop down trees on a desert island?' 'No. To cut off the hands of swimmers who can't be saved, because otherwise the boat and everyone in it will sink.' When Enzo shoots an illegal migrant from his bedroom one night, it triggers a series of events that embroil old and young, rich and poor, native and foreign. His elderly neighbours Ruth, Diana and Marta are three friends who have retired to Tuscany. Ruth's favourite grandson Olly is about to get married from her idyllic hillside farmhouse; however, the bride, Tania, seems curiously unengaged by anything but vlogging as a social media influencer. Marta, preparing to give the annual music recital sponsored by a Russian oligarch in hiding from Putin, is increasingly unwell, and her grandson, Xan, is full of resentment at the inequalities he encounters. Diana is nursing her demented husband, Lord Evenlode, and desperate for her own freedom to begin. Over two weeks in May, all these characters will face challenging choices as they grapple with their own past and with present dangers. For although the Tuscan spring looks as ravishing as a Renaissance painting, the realities of modern life make it harder and harder to believe that there is more that unites us than what keeps us apart. Brilliant, enthralling, funny and generous, this is an exploration of the indomitable human heart.

Rose Aubrey is one of a family of four children. Their father, Piers, is the disgraced son of an Irish landowning family, a violent, noble and quite unscrupulous leader of popular causes. His Scottish wife, Clare, is an artist, a tower of strength, fanatically devoted to a musical future for her daughters. This is the story of their life in south London, a life threatened by Piers's streak of tragic folly which keeps them on the verge of financial ruin and social disgrace . . . 'A book bursting with love and vitality' DAILY EXPRESS

'A novel written with passion and moral outrage' Sunday Times 'Sympathetic, thought-provoking and often deeply moving' Daily Telegraph 'You can't put this down' Independent Rich or poor, five people, seemingly very different, find their lives in the capital connected in undreamed-of ways. Job, the illegal mini-cab driver whose wife in Zimbabwe no longer answers his letters; Ian, the idealistic supply teacher in exile from South Africa; Katie from New York, jilted and miserable as a dogsbody at a political magazine, and fifteen-year-old Anna, trafficked into sexual slavery. Polly Noble, an overworked human rights lawyer, knows better than most how easy it is to fall through the cracks into the abyss. Yet when her au pair, Iryna, disappears, Polly's own needs and beliefs drag her family into a world of danger, deceit and terror. Riveting, humane, engaging, Hearts and Minds is a novel that is both entertaining and prepared to ask the most serious questions about the way we live.

As a young guide for Sunshine Tours, Armino Fabbio leads a pleasant, if humdrum life -- until he becomes circumstantially involved in the murder of an old peasant woman in Rome. The woman, he gradually comes to realise, was his family's beloved servant many years ago, in his native town of Ruffano. He returns to his birthplace, and once there, finds it is haunted by the phantom of his brother, Aldo, shot down in flames in '43. Over five hundred years before, the sinister Duke Claudio, known as The Falcon, lived his twisted, brutal life, preying on the people of Ruffano. But now it is the twentieth century, and the town seems to have forgotten its violent history. But have things really changed? The parallels between the past and present become ever more evident.

'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight 'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry 'Absolutely magnificent' Marian Keyes Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded. Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low? What is the mystery surrounding their unappealing new home? The beauty of the landscape is ravishing, yet it conceals a dark side involving poverty, revenge, abuse and violence which will rise up to threaten them. Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless knows a different side to country life, as both a Health Visitor and a sheep farmer's wife; and when Lottie's innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another. At the end of their year, the lives of all will be changed for ever. A suspenseful black comedy, this is a rich, compassionate and enthralling novel in its depiction of the English countryside, and the potentially lethal interplay between money and marriage.

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers are played out, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty, as Beryl Bainbridge's haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.