Series: Virago Modern Classics

While I waited for sleep I retraced the road which brought me to you. Unbelievably it only took six months, equinox to equinox. This dazzling rediscovered classic, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1973, is a heady, witty and seductive exploration of female sexuality—perfect for fans of Iris Murdoch and Brigid Brophy. 'Funny and brave and moving and absolutely bonkers....

INTRODUCED BY KATE SAUNDERS 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN 'My favourite writer . . . I pick up her books with joy' JILLY COOPER 'Beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit in a saline drip' NEW YORK TIMES In a provincial university town, Caro Grimstone, a dissatisfied faculty wife, becomes...

The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat' SARAH WATERS In the final novel of her stunning trilogy, Mary Renault vividly imagines the life of Alexander the Great, the charismatic leader whose drive and ambition created a legend. Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind...

DISCOVER THE DU MAURIER DARK ROMANCE COLLECTION 'A great gothic writer' — KATE MOSSE 'A writer of fearless originality' — GUARDIAN 'The indisputable queen of the sophisticated literary thriller and historical romance' — LAURA SHEPPERSON 'She is in a league of her own... majestic, terrifying and beautiful' — CAMILLA GRUDOVA 'Feared and hated by friend and foe. The King's General...

'The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat' SARAH WATERS 'The Alexandriad is one of the twentieth century's most unexpectedly original works of art' GORE VIDAL In the first novel of her stunning trilogy, Mary Renault vividly imagines the life of Alexander the Great, the charismatic leader whose drive...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF BLACK NARCISSUS AND THE RIVER 'One of our best and most captivating novelists' PHILIP HENSHER '[Godden has] a genius for storytelling' EVENING STANDARD 'Her prose is pure, delicate, and gently witty' NEW YORK TIMES 'Descriptions of the Italian setting are gorgeous but the real strength is the childlike perspective' DAILY MAIL When their mother leaves...

Cover design by Orla Kiely Mildred Lathbury is one of those excellent women who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sales, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather. As such, though, she often gets herself embroiled in other people’s...

'One of the greatest historical novels ever written' - SARAH WATERS 'I love to find queer representation in historical fiction. . . Renault's eye for intimacy is amazing' - DOUGLAS STUART 'Fierce, complex and eloquent' - MADELINE MILLER 'Mary Renault is a shining light' - HILARY MANTEL A groundbreaking queer classic and powerful reimagining of the last years of Alexander...

Mary Renault is a shining light - HILARY MANTEL Mary Renault's portraits of the ancient world are fierce, complex and eloquent - MADELINE MILLER The sequel to The King Must Die. The Bull from the Sea continues the story of the hero Theseus after his return from Crete. Having freed the city of Athens from the terrible tribute demanded by...

The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat - SARAH WATERS The Alexandriad is one of the twentieth century's most unexpectedly original works of art - GORE VIDAL In the first novel of her stunning trilogy, Mary Renault vividly imagines the life of Alexander the Great, the charismatic leader...

Discover Caroline Blackwood's darkly brilliant debut - a perfect rediscovered classic for fans of Shirley Jackson and Ottessa Moshfegh 'A bracingly nasty book . . . Splendid, dark, often very funny' MEGAN NOLAN, Telegraph A lavish Upper West Side apartment is the site of a familial cold war about to enter a phase of dangerous escalation. J is a lonely...

The Blunderer was written by Highsmith in between Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley. The novel follows the young, successful, and handsome Walter Stackhouse, who seems to have it all, that is, until the day his wife's body is found at the bottom of a cliff. Under the intense scrutiny of the investigation, he commits one mistake,...

'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' - Elizabeth Bowen, author of The Heat of the Day Intelligent and haunting, with echoes of Brief Encounter, this is a love story by one of the best British writers of the 20th century. During summer games of hide and seek, Harriet falls...

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...' Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the brooding house Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter...

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive. Damage, Josephine Hart's debut novel, is an international bestseller filmed with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche. This novel now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic. It is one of the most chilling explorations of physical passion and dark, obsessive love ever written. A remarkable first novel of awesome...

This was the freedom she wanted, an animal freedom exposed to the emptiness of sky and land and water. As she stepped forward, Ann flipped into the water and was gone. Evelyn Hall, running from her disastrous marriage of sixteen years, arrives in the neon-lit desert heat of 1950s Reno - the only place in America where she can apply...

'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIAN 'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER 'Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARD The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living. Sally Jay...

Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s, where poverty, babies (however much loved) and husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up...

Rumer Godden's stunning classic novel of devotion, faith and madness You have to be very strong to live close to God or a mountain, or you'll turn a little mad . . . High in the Himalayas, the mountaintop palace shines like a jewel. Built for the General's harem, laughter and music once floated out over the gorge. Now it...

INTRODUCED BY DIANA EVANS 'A writer of huge compassion and acute observation, and also of dazzling style . . . Her work is more relevant than ever' DIANA EVANS'Timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender' EMMA GARMAN, PARIS REVIEW'It's as though we've been invited not so much to a...

Between April 20th and June 22nd of 1945, the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin wrote about life within the falling city as it was sacked by the Russian Army. Fending off the boredom and deprivation of hiding, the author records her experiences, observations, and meditations in this stark and vivid diary. Accounts of the bombing, the rapes, the...

The extraordinary true story of how one young girl escaped the Holocaust 'It holds you with the same intensity as The Diary of Anne Frank and leaves you heart-broken, illuminated, and amazed at the capacity for courage' GUARDIAN * 'I never realised that there could be such suffering in the world, and that anyone could live through it' - from...

'Funny, funny, funny. She's wicked and wise' GRETA GERWIG'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER'Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARD'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIANHere was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I...

The boldest of English women writers - Lorna Sage Her writing is pyrotechnic - fuelled with ideas, packed with images and spangling the night with her starry language - Observer She can glide from ancient to modern, from darkness to luminosity, from depravity to comedy without any hint of strain and without losing the elusive power of the original tales...

The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat - SARAH WATERS The heavens say it begins with the death of the King . . . Alexander the Great, conqueror of an empire stretching from Greece to Egypt to India, is dead at the age of thirty-three. His only direct...

Disturbing, exhilarating, potent, savagely funny.

Anne Lister is the inspiration for Gentleman Jack, the acclaimed BBC/HBO series by Sally Wainwright, starring Suranne Jones. The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' - Emma Donoghue Engaging, revealing, at...

By the bestselling author of Black Narcissus and The River 'A haunting tale . . . the whole book burns with beauty and poetry' Evening Standard 'Powerful adult themes underlie the novel's glimmering surface' Rosie Thomas, Guardian 'One of our best and most captivating novelists' Philip Hensher Sophie Barrington Ward, without a husband, with two children and very little income,...

'This novel catches fire' NEW YORK TIMES DISCOVER THIS THRILLING STORY OF DESIRE AND AMBITION FROM THE AUTHOR OF REBECCA She set men's hearts on fire and scandalised a country. In Regency London, the only way for a woman to succeed is to beat men at their own game. So when Mary Anne Clarke seeks an escape from her squalid...

The bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 'The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense' Mark Billingham 'No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying' Vogue 'Dear Sir, I suppose you are pretty pleased with yourself? Superior to everyone, you think....

ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITERS TO HAVE EVER LIVED. NOW A SUCCESSFUL FILM . 'This much-loved classic is above all a celebration of kindness and hope' KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE'My all-time favourite classic children's author' JACQUELINE WILSON 'Edith Nesbit was endlessly surprising and inventive' FRANK COTTRELL-BOYCEWhen their father is suddenly taken away, the children's lives change overnight. Unable to afford...

At the age of 18, Beryl Markham, then Clutterbuck, was the first woman in Africa to be granted a racehorse trainer's licence; she was still active as a trainer until her death in 1986. She took up flying in 1931, inventing big game hunting by air, and in September 1936 she made world headlines by becoming the first person to...

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE'She's one of the most important and interesting children's fiction writers of the last fifty years' NEIL GAIMAN'What a thrill to discover this gem from the witty and endlessly inventive Joan Aiken' CHRIS RIDDELL'She is one of the writers I admire most in the world' KATHERINE RUNDELL'She was a literary treasure, and...

NOW A HAUNTING BBC DRAMA, STARRING GEMMA ARTERTON AND DIANA RIGG 'A remarkable and beautiful book' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'I envy anyone reading it for the first time' AMANDA COE '[Godden has] a genius for storytelling' EVENING STANDARD High in the Himalayas, the mountaintop palace shines like a jewel. Built for the General's harem, laughter and music once floated out over...

THE ANCIENT GREEK STAGE BROUGHT THRILLINGLY TO LIFE BY THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION'Mary Renault has made the classical era alive' GORE VIDAL'Her books have stood the test of time' INDEPENDENTThe artist flows into the mask the poet offers him; only so will the god possess him. Greece, fourth century BC. The golden age of theatre may be over, but...

AN ODYSSEY OF ART AND POWER, BY THE CLASSIC QUEEN OF ANCIENT GREEK RETELLINGS'Mary Renault is an exceptional storyteller' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON'A song of praise, a work of love, a serene, deliberate book, full of wisdom, rich in character, incident and description' WALL STREET JOURNALEach generation has its own dream of beauty. I have lived long enough to watch it change.At...

'A small masterpiece' COLM TOIBIN, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'The most beautiful novel published in Spain since the Civil War' GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ 'Rodoreda's writing pays such fierce and tender attention to the experience of being alive, and the tempest that ordinary life can be' HELEN OYEYEMI When we were all alone, and everyone was in bed and the streets empty, he...

THE BESTSELLING CLASSIC OF SIXTIES LONDON 'Touching, truthful and fresh - a tour de force' MARGARET DRABBLE 'Hilarious, heartbreaking' PARIS REVIEW 'Her art is ignited by voice' ALI SMITH, GUARDIAN 'Exuberantly alive' SUNDAY TIMES To think when I was a kid I planned to conquer the world and if anyone saw me now they'd say, 'She's had a rough night,...

By the author of Black Narcissus and The River 'A masterpiece of construction and utterly realistically convincing' — JACQUELINE WILSON 'Godden's rich understanding of human nature, her humour and her beautiful prose inevitably leave one aglow' — CHICAGO TRIBUNE 'Godden here tries her deft writing hand at landscaping a child's heart' — TIME * Someone has been digging up the...

THE DAZZLING LOST CLASSIC A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025 A Cosmopolitan Best Book for April 2025 A New York Times Book Review Most-Anticipated Book of the Spring A Time Best Book of the Month A The Week Best Book of 2025 Acquired by Toni Morrison, championed by Gayl Jones, and almost forgotten for forty years, Fish Tales...

'The tone is one of intellectual relish . . . rational . . . refined . . . witty' NEW STATESMAN 'Her work is funny, sexy, frightening and brutal' EDMUND GORDON, GUARDIAN 'Angela Carter liked to blur boundaries and break rules' GABY WOOD, INDEPENDENT Celebrating five decades of the feminist publisher, each of the Five Gold Reads represents an iconic...

'Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can with that same breath, shatter and destroy it.' Faithful to her word, Sophie Duval reveals...

Ghosts past, present, and future haunt an old London house in this masterful work of fiction from a New York Times Bestselling author. 'A genius for storytelling' EVENING STANDARD 'One of our best and most original novelists' PHILIP HENSHER 'Her craftsmanship is always sure . . . pure, delicate, and gently witty' NEW YORK TIMES Grizel Dane, a bold young...

BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'One of our best and most captivating novelists' PHILIP HENSHER '[Godden] writes with grace and a cheerfully lilting prose' KIRKUS REVIEWS 'Her craftsmanship is always sure' NEW YORK TIMES A revered effigy of the God, Shiva, is missing from the Patna Hall Hotel on south India's exquisite Coromandel coast. Was it stolen, and...

'As profound as Katherine Mansfield, restrained as Jane Austen, sharp as Dorothy Parker' Independent INTRODUCED BY NICOLA BEAUMAN The lark rose in the brilliant air, higher, higher on its spun-glass spiral of song, knowing nothing of peace or war, accepting joyously the bounty of another day. A hot summer's day in 1946. The village of Wealding is no longer troubled...

The third book in the Anne Shirley series. Anne of the Island sees Anne leaving childhood behind as she moves from Green Gables to attend Richmond College. Her new life brings both adventures and tragedy, as well as new friends, including the handsome Roy Gardner. But her childhood friend Gilbert Blythe is also in Redmond, and his feelings for Anne...

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece - Robert McCrum, Guardian, 'The Best 100 Novels' An author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth - SARAH WATERS Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen - soul-sisters all - ANNE TYLER On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where...

DISCOVER THE DU MAURIER DARK ROMANCE COLLECTION Du Maurier is mistress of the sleight of hand in fiction . . . brilliantly, marvellously chilling - MAGGIE O'FARRELL Moody and unnerving – GILLIAN FLYNN Sinuous and undeniably feral – JULIE MYERSON * Every day, haunted still by doubt, I ask myself a question which I cannot answer. Was Rachel innocent or...

By chance, two men—one English, the other French—meet in a provincial railway station. Their physical resemblance is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking until at last John, the Englishman, falls into a drunken stupour. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, his French companion has stolen his identity and disappeared. So...

A LITHUB BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 Acquired by Toni Morrison, championed by Gayl Jones, and almost forgotten for forty years, Fish Tales is a fierce, fearless modern classic for our own fragmented times. 'Candid, fast and alive' – RAVEN LEILANI 'Fast, fearless, so full of life it practically vibrates in your hands' – JUSTIN TORRES 'Wondrous and outrageous, real...

Growing up in Edwardian south London, Alice Rowlands longs for romance and excitement, for a release from a life that is dreary, restrictive and lonely. Her father, a vet, is harsh and domineering; his new girlfriend brash and lascivious. Alice seeks refuge in memories and fantasies, in her rapturous longing for Nicholas, a handsome young sailor, and in the blossoming...

The second book in the Anne Shirley series. 'Having adventures comes natural to some people,' said Anne serenely. 'You just have a gift for them or you haven't.' Five years ago, Anne arrived at Avonlea a skinny orphan without a friend in the world; now it would be impossible to imagine Green Gables without her. Anne's high spirits and warm...

FROM A BESTSELLING AUTHOR With a new introduction by Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage 'The prose is clear, the plot is page-turning, the characters are utterly believable' — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 'The first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies' — New York Times 'My favourite type of novel, literary with an astonishing...

Her mother's dying request obliges Mary Yellan to make a grim journey across bleak Cornish moorland to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience and her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn. With the coachman's warning echoing in her mind and affected by the inn's brooding power, Mary is thwarted in her intention to help her aunt. She finds herself drawn...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA 'Daphne du Maurier has no rival' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'du Maurier is a magician, a virtuoso' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING 'A storyteller of cunning and genius' SALLY BEAUMAN 'I tell you your mine will be in ruins and your home destroyed and your children forgotten . . . but this hill will be standing still to confound...

In Regency London, the only way for a woman to succeed is to beat men at their own game. So, when Mary Anne Clarke seeks an escape from her squalid surroundings in Bowling Inn Alley, she ventures first into the scurrilous world of the pamphleteers. Her personal charms are such, however, that before long she comes to the notice of...

'A small Gothic masterpiece . . . I have read it many times, and with every re-read I marvel again at its many qualities' SARAH WATERS'A wonderful and original novel' ALAN HOLLINGHURST'The strange off-beat talent of Barbara Comyns [whose] innocent eye observes with child-like simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrence' GRAHAM GREENE 'Quite simply, Comyns writes like...

CLASSIC THRILLER BEHIND THE HITCHCOCK FILM AND HIGHSMITH'S FIRST NOVEL By the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley and Carol 'Her books have stylistic texture, psychological depth, mesmeric readability' SUNDAY TIMES 'The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense' MARK BILLINGHAM 'A gem . . . A magnificent suspense' DAILY MAIL The psychologists would call it folie...

'I do know how to behave - believe me, because I know. I have always known...' Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, the large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy, and love seem locked out by...

'One of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century' PARIS REVIEW'The Transit of Venus is astronomical: as sharp, remote and dazzling as a celestial body' LAUREN GROFF'A wonderfully mysterious book . . . unforgettably rich' ANNE TYLER'Epic and microscopic . . . stitched in prose of gorgeously sustained intensity' GEOFF DYERThe tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The...

'Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant' COSMOPOLITAN 'A brilliant novel: honest, engaging and sharp as a tack' SARAH WATERS 'Lively, vivid and exceedingly entertaining' SUNDAY TIMES This groundbreaking novel celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2023. One of the first novels to frankly depict friendship, sex and women's lives, it was a revelation and continues to inspire today. WITH A...

This book is the very simple story of the love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks and Co, sellers of rare and secondhand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London. Daily Telegraph Told in a series of letters in 84 Charing Cross Road and then in diary form in the second part, The Duchess of...

Acerbic, wisecracking and hilarious, this is the definitive essay collection from New York legend and satirist, Fran Lebowitz, star of Martin Scorsese's hit Netflix series, Pretend It's a City. 'The gold standard for intelligence, efficiency and humour. Now and forever' DAVID SEDARIS 'She's inexhaustible - her personality, her knowledge, her brilliance, most of all her humour' MARTIN SCORSESE 'The rare...

On a bitter November evening, young Mary Yellan journeys across the rainswept moors to Jamaica Inn in honour of her mother's dying request. When she arrives, the warning of the coachman begins to echo in her memory, for her aunt Patience cowers before hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn. Terrified of the inn's brooding power, Mary gradually finds herself ensnared in the...

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE With an introduction by her biographer, Mark Bostridge 'Remains one of the most powerful and widely read war memoirs of all time' GUARDIAN 'Vera Brittain's heart-rending account of the way her generation's lives changed is still as shocking and moving as ever' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'A heartbreaking account of the impact of the First World War...

Set in fourth-century B.C. Greece, The Mask of Apollo is narrated by Nikeratos, a tragic actor who takes with him on all his travels a gold mask of Apollo, a relic of the theatre's golden age, which is now past. At first his mascot, the mask gradually becomes his conscience, and he refers to it for his gravest decisions, when...

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' THE TIMES 'I love Highsmith so much . . . What a revelation her writing is' GILLIAN FLYNN 'Highsmith was every bit as deviant and quirky as her mischievous heroes' J. G. BALLARD, DAILY TELEGRAPH This Sweet Sickness centres around...

When people play the game: Name three or four persons whom you would choose to have with you on a desert island - they never choose the Delaneys. They don't even choose us one by one as individuals. We have earned, not always fairly we consider, the reputation of being difficult guests...' Maria, Niall, and Celia have grown up in...

Inspired by a grisly discovery in the nineteenth century, The King's General was the first of du Maurier's novels to be written at Menabilly, the model for Manderley in Rebecca. Set in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of a country and a family riven by war, and features one of fiction's most original heroines. Honor Harris is only...

The Group follows eight graduates from exclusive Vassar College as they find love and heartbreak, forge careers, gossip and party in 1930s Manhattan. The Group can be seen as the original Sex and the City. It is the first novel to frankly portray women's real lives, exploring subjects such as sex, contraception, motherhood, and marriage.

First published in 1937, Orchids On Your Budget gives advice on all manner of subjects, from entertaining and creating the perfect capsule wardrobe to relinquishing the family estate. Lest you worry about how to put the advice into practice, each chapter concludes with a case study providing examples of women who heeded—and those lamentable souls who ignored—Marjorie's wise words. It's...

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE With an introduction by her biographer, Mark Bostridge 'Remains one of the most powerful and widely read war memoirs of all time' GUARDIAN 'Vera Brittain's heart-rending account of the way her generation's lives changed is still as shocking and moving as ever' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'A heartbreaking account of the impact of the First World War...

INTRODUCED BY LISSA EVANS 'I envy anyone yet to discover the joy of Monica Dickens. She's beady eyed, big hearted and blissfully funny' Nina Stibbe One Pair of Feet is not just a spirited and entertaining account of the training of a hospital nurse in wartime but a fascinating glimpse into a time and a culture so recent and yet...

With a new introduction by DIANA EVANS 'Timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender' Emma Garman, Paris Review Set on a bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of...

Christine Granville, G.M., O.B.E. and Croix de Guerre, one of the most successful women agents of the Second World War and said to have been Churchill's 'favourite spy', was murdered, aged 37, in a London Hotel in 1952. Her actions as a British secret agent in Poland, Hungary and France were legendary even in her lifetime, and she repeatedly risked...

Renault's masterpiece. One of the greatest historical novels ever written - SARAH WATERS In the second novel of her stunning trilogy, Mary Renault vividly imagines the life of Alexander the Great, the charismatic leader whose drive and ambition created a legend. The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander's life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and...

Introduced by ZADIE SMITH 'One of the greatest writers of our time' Toni Morrison 'She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her . . .' When sixteen-year-old...

INTRODUCED BY HAZEL HOLT 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' — Richard Osman 'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' — Philip Larkin When Barbara Pym died in 1980, she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume contains an early novel, Civil to Strangers, three novellas and an autobiographical essay, 'Finding a...

Janet Frame's luminous words are the more precious because they were snatched from the jaws of the disaster of her early life. It is one of the classics of autobiography. She knew that a writer must search her soul in order to say anything that is essential – Hilary Mantel Janet Frame is the greatest New Zealand writer. She is...

When the beautiful, ambitious actress Regina takes Fosca into her life and learns his amazing truth, she is obsessed with the thought that in his memory her performances will live forever. But, as he recounts the story of his existence over more than six centuries, as she learns of his involvement in some of the most significant events in history...