The freshest and most poignant observer of human foibles and heroic hearts since Anita Brookner, Mary Wesley and Alice Thomas Ellis. When Lydia sees Simon late at night driving down Westbourne Grove her suspicions are aroused. Simon, a TV film director, lives in Hammersmith with his wife Flora and their three children, what need has he for the dubious attractions of Bayswater? The attraction is Gillian, an accountant, whom Simon met at a dinner party while Flora and the children were away in la douce France. Flora struggles with her re-found Christian faith, though Anglican now rather than Roman Catholic, as Simon falls into a hopelessly passionate and sexual affair that brings its own burden and guilt. The smart world of middle-class West London is depicted with savage wit and a needle-sharp intelligence that will remind readers of the novels of Muriel Spark.

From the Booker short-listed author of The Essence of theThing. Madeleine St John's new novel is a poignant, perceptive and deliciously funny portrait of modern life and an elegant anatomy of love. Her most beguiling novel to date. Madeleine St John's poignant and characteristically witty new novel tells the story of three people locked in an unhappy kaleidoscope of emotions and desires, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. There's Alex, miserable in his cold and calmly professional marriage, unable to leave because of his two children. Next comes Andrew, recently home from ten years in America, leaving an ex-wife and a beloved daughter on the other side of the world. And finally, there's Barbara, the enchanting and lustrous object of their affections, formidably self-possessed but strangely aimless and unfulfilled. With elegance and acuity, Madeleine St John chronicles their progress through numerous false starts, reversals and apprehensions; the result is a memorable anatomy of desire and its opposite - despair.

An exciting new talent, shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize, hailed as 'a triumph' by The Times, and a poignant observer of human hearts, foibles and follies. ''There isn't a false note in the book, nothing but ravishing grace, wit and tender feelings.' Mail on Sunday Nicola's problems began when she is finally told by her partner, Jonathan, 'that we should part...'. She nips out to the off-licence to buy cigarettes and returns to find a stranger in her living room. The stranger looks like Jonathan, talks like Jonathan, yet Nicola did not recognise him as the man he was before. Jonathan had always been predictable, but now Nicola wondered where was the man she loved? How did he become such a mystery all of a sudden? Since when did a solicitor have hidden depths? Friends gather round, always ready to offer encouragement or insult her ex-husband, yet Nicola must face up to the adjustments of Life After Jonathan. It is not the experience of liberation, empowerment and excitement it is meant to be. Madeleine St John's third novel is haunting and hilarious. St John is at her bittersweet best writing of the things women will do to hold on to love and the things men will do to escape it .

' A pocket masterpiece. A jewel' Hilary Mantel On the second floor of the famous F. G. Goode department store, in Ladies' Cocktail Frocks, the women in black are girding themselves for the Christmas rush. Among the staff are Patty Williams with her wayward husband Frank, the sweet but unlucky Fay, faithful Mrs Jacob of the measuring tape, and Lisa, the new Sales Assistant (Temporary), who is waiting for the results of her Leaving Certificate. Across the floor and beyond the arch, Lisa will meet the glamorous Continental refugee, Magda, guardian of the rose-pink cave of Model Gowns. With the lightest touch and the most tender of comic instincts, Madeleine St John conjures a vanished summer of innocence.