Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de' Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of marriage to Alfonso d'Este, ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate her appears before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in uncomfortable finery for the painting which is to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferrarese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, her future hangs entirely in the balance.

A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.

The untold love story that inspired Shakespeare's greatest masterpiece.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.

Hamnet tells the powerful story of Agnes and Will, and of the son whose life has been all but forgotten, but who inspired one of the greatest plays ever written.

WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021 'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times 'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.

Someone in this house was sad but pretending not to be. Someone – and this thought made a smile curl up on its face – needed some nouka-mischief.

When Jem and his family move to the countryside, he doesn’t like his new home one bit. It’s an old cottage on the side of a hill, where strange things keep happening: shoes are filled up with conkers, the stairs become tangled in a woollen maze. Jem’s sister Verity is certain it is the work of a “nouka”, an ancient creature from local folklore that lives deep down inside the hill. Jem, however, is adamant that there is no such thing.

But this small mythical creature, so attuned to the hearts and minds of others, does exist. And, what’s more, it is determined, through mischief and mayhem, to help Jem reignite the spark within himself once more.

Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de' Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of marriage to Alfonso d'Este, heir to the Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: Alfonso is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appears before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in uncomfortable finery for the painting which is to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferrarese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, her future hangs entirely in the balance.

'I once decided to become friends with someone on the sole basis that she named O Caledonia as her favourite book' Maggie O'Farrell 'A sparky, funny work of genius and one of the best least-known novels of the 20th Century' Ali Smith 'Funny, surprising, exquisitely written and brilliant on the smelly, absurd, harsh business of growing up. The Bronte sisters and Poe via Dodie Smith and Edward Gorey' David Nicholls 'An absolute sumptuous treat of a book' Elizabeth Macneal 'A wonderful oddity - brief, vivid, eccentric, written with ferocious zest and black humour' Penelope Lively 'The words sing in their sentences' The Times 'The reader feels unalloyed joy on every page' Independent Vera was painting the pony's hooves gold in the dining room; Janet said this was bad for him; poison would seep into his bloodstream. At the bottom of a great stone staircase, dressed in her mother's black lace evening dress, twisted in murderous death, lies Janet. So end the sixteen years of Janet's short life. A life spent in a draughty Scottish castle, where roses will not grow, and a jackdaw decides to live in the doll's house. A life peopled by prettier, smoother-haired siblings, a Nanny with a face like the North Sea and the peculiar, whisky-swigging Cousin Lila. A life where Janet is perpetually misunderstood - and must turn from people, to animals, to books, to her own wild and wonderful imagination. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MAGGIE O'FARRELL

Have you ever woken up suddenly, in the middle of the night, without knowing why? Best-selling and award-winning author of Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell weaves an extraordinary and compelling modern fairy tale about the bravery of a little girl and the miracle of a snowy day. Sylvie wakes one night, suddenly, without knowing why. Then she sees the most spectacular sight – a pair of wings, enormous in size, made of the softest snow-white feathers imaginable. An angel in her bedroom … a SNOW angel! He tells her that he is here to look after her, for Sylvie is not as well as she seems... Many months later, as Sylvie recovers from her illness, she longs to see her snow angel again. He saved her life! There is so much she wants to tell him, so much she wants to know! Will he ever come back to her? And how can Sylvie make sure that everyone she loves has their own snow angel, to keep them safe, too?

A "Wall Street Journal "Bestseller A "Washington Post Book World" Best Book of the Year
"I found this actually unputdownable, written with a gripping dramatic insidiousness reminiscent of classic writers like Rebecca West and Daphne Du Maurier." --Ali Smith, author of "The Accidental"Esme Lennox is a dreamy child, an odd, bookish young woman, the kind of girl who stares and listens and won't flirt with boys at dances. And then, in the space of a moment, Esme Lennox is gone.Years later, a stunning phone call breaks the silence at Iris Lockhart's vintage clothing shop: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital after more than sixty years. Iris's grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme's papers prove she is Kitty's sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme's face. But she's still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, sure to bring life-altering secrets when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?
"Haunting. O'Farrell is a feminist avenging angel who wields the modern Gothic like a gleaming sword." - "The Boston Globe ""Think Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," Charlotte Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' or Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" . . . It's a breathtaking, heart-breaking creation . . . In O'Farrell's fierce, engrossing novel, the crimes of the past rear up with surprising vengeance." - "The" "Washington Post Book World"Maggie O'Farrell is the author of three previous novels, including her acclaimed debut, "After You'd Gone," Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, Maggie grew up in Wales and Scotland. She now lives inEdinburgh. Visit www.HarcourtBooks.com/EsmeLennox. Discussion guide available at www.HarcourtBooks.com.

When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life for herself, with Innes at her side.

It is stripped off - the paper - in great patches ...The colour is repellent ...In the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so - I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about ...' Based on the author's own experiences, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is the chilling tale of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by the 'rest cure' prescribed after the birth of her child. Isolated in a crumbling colonial mansion, in a room with bars on the windows, the tortuous pattern of the yellow wallpaper winds its way into the recesses of her mind. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was America's leading feminist intellectual of the early twentieth century. In addition to her masterpiece 'The Yellow Wallpaper', this new edition includes a selection of her best short fiction and extracts from her autobiography.

INTRODUCED BY MAGGIE O'FARRELL 'A great work of literature, the product of a questing, burning intellect' MAGGIE O'FARRELL 'Even if the themes being explored might seem irrelevant . . . this is not the case' GUARDIAN 'I loved the unnerving, sarcastic tone, the creepy ending' PARIS REVIEW Based on the author's own experiences, The Yellow Wallpaper is the chilling tale of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by the 'rest cure' prescribed after the birth of her child. While she is isolated in a crumbling mansion, in a room with bars on the windows, the tortuous pattern of the yellow wallpaper winds its way into the recesses of her mind. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was America's leading feminist intellectual of the early twentieth century and a brilliant writer, editor and speaker. The Yellow Wallpaper is her masterpiece.

London, 1976. In the thick of a record-breaking heatwave, Gretta Riordan's newly-retired husband has cleaned out his bank account and vanished. Now, for the first time in years, Gretta calls her children home: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, whose blighted past that has driven a wedge between her and her younger sister; and Aoife, the youngest, whose new life in Manhattan is elaborately arranged to conceal a devastating secret.
In a story that stretches from the Upper West Side to a village on the coast of Ireland, Maggie O'Farrell explores the mysteries that inhere within families, and reveals the fault lines over which we build our lives. "Instructions for a Heatwave" weaves an unforgettable narrative of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.

The new children's book from multi-award-winning author of Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell, paired once more with Daniela Terrazzini's stunning illustrations. When Jem and his family move to the countryside, he doesn't like his new home one bit. It's an old cottage on the side of a hill, where strange things keep happening: shoes are filled up with conkers, the stairs become tangled in a woollen maze. Jem's sister Verity is certain it is the work of a "nouka", an ancient creature from local folklore that lives deep down inside the hill. Jem, however, is adamant that there is no such thing. But this small mythical creature, so attuned to the hearts and minds of others, does exist. And, what's more, it is determined, through mischief and mayhem, to help Jem reignite the spark within himself once more.

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MAGGIE O'FARRELL As an orphan, Jane's childhood is full of trouble, but her stubborn independence and sense of self help her to steer through the miseries inflicted by cruel relatives and a brutal school. A position as governess at the Thornfield Hall promises a kind of freedom. But Thornfield is a house full of secrets, its master a passionate, tormented man, and before long Jane faces her greatest struggle in a choice between love and self-respect. 'A revolutionary work of fiction.' Tanya Sweeney, The Irish Independent VINTAGE CLASSICS BRONTE SERIES - beautiful editions, three iconic stories, three extraordinary women.