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Bernard Cornwell
Harper Collins, PB, 9780007331857
Thomas of Hookton, a veteran of Crecy and many other battles, is the leader of a mercenary company of bowmen and men-at-arms who ravage the countryside east of Gascony. Edward, Prince of Wales, later to be known as the Black Prince, is assembling an army to fight the French once more but before Thomas can join, he must fulfil an urgent ... More/Buy
Air Raid
Alexander Kluge
Seagull Books, HB, 9780857420794
On April 8, 1945, several American bomber squadrons were informed that their German targets were temporarily unavailable due to cloud cover. As it was too late to turn back, the assembled ordnance of more than two hundred bombers was diverted to nearby Halberstadt. A middle-sized cathedral town of no particular industrial or strategic importance, Halberstadt was almost totally destroyed, and a ... More/Buy
Astray
Emma Donoghue
Picador, PB, 9781447211952
Counterfeiter. Dishwasher. Prostitute. Attorney. Sculptor. Mercenary. Elephant. Corpse. The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's latest fact-inspired fictions have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters. They cross other borders, too: those of race, law, sex and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress. Donoghue describes the brutal plot hatched by a ... More/Buy
Back to Blood
Tom Wolfe
Jonathan Cape, PB, 9780224097284
As a police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay - with officer Nestor Camacho on board - Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city, he introduces the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, an ambitious young journalist and his Yale-marinated editor; a psychiatrist who specializes in sex addiction and his Latina nurse by day, mistress ... More/Buy
The Bathing Women
Tie Ning
Harper Collins, PB, 9780007489862
Sisters Tiao and Fan grew up in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution where they witnessed ritual humiliation and suffering. They also witnessed the death of their baby sister in a tragic accident. It was an accident they could have prevented; an accident that will stay with them forever. In the China of the 1990s the sisters lead seemingly successful lives. ... More/Buy
Black Sky, Black Sea
Izzet Celasin
Maclehose Press, PB, 9781847246448
1977. Poised between the secular values of socialism and the conservatism of a tenuously balanced government, Istanbul is a fractured city haunted by demons of its own making. Along with thousands of other left-wing activists, Oak's interest in politics leads him to join the annual May Day rallies. There he encounters Zuhal, a fearless girl with a gun. As battles rage ... More/Buy
Blue Kind
Kathryn Born
Northern Illinois University Press, PB, 9780875806822
In Neom the laws of physics are lax and everyone still gets high. The city squares do it so they can keep working non-stop. The hipsters do it so they can accept things as they are and not how they want them to be. And for a thousand years, Alison has done it to cope with the burdens of immortality. If ... More/Buy
The Cleaner of Chartres
Sally Vickers
Penguin, PB, 9780670922130
When a strange young woman is found sleeping in the porch of the ancient cathedral of Chartres, none of the residents of this quiet little town realize what changes lie in store for them . . . With her dark skin, her colourful clothes and her curious manner, Agnes Morel catches the eye of everyone she encounters. Before long she is ... More/Buy
Dear Life
Alice Munro
Chatto & Windus, HB, 9780701187842
In this new and brilliant collection, Munro once more explores the lives of various inhabitants of the countryside and towns around Lake Huron. With her now trademark ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious- and timeless-feeling stories, Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped - the moment a dream, or sex, or a ... More/Buy
Flight Behaviour
Barbara Kingsolver
Faber, PB, 9780571290789
Discontented with her life of poverty on a failing farm in the Eastern United States, Dellarobia, a young mother, impulsively seeks out an affair. Instead, on the Appalachian mountains above her farm, she discovers something much more profoundly life-changing - a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the ... More/Buy
The Free World
David Bezmozgis
Penguin, PB, 9780241953754
Welcome to Rome. It's the summer of 1978, and the Krasnansky family are passing through. Alongside thousands of other Soviet refugees they await passage to a new home in the West. But escaping Communism is not so easy (especially when some of the Krasnansky insist on bringing it with them), and it's harder still when their sponsor in the USA lets ... More/Buy
Gordon
Edith Templeton
Penguin, PB, 9780241964644
Post-war London. Louisa, a smartly dressed young woman in the midst of a divorce, meets a charismatic man in a pub, and within an hour has been sexually conquered by him on a garden bench. Thus begins her baffling but magnetic love affair with Richard Gordon. Gordon, a psychiatrist, keeps Louisa in his thrall with his almost omniscient ability to see ... More/Buy
Granta 121: Best of Young Brazilian Novelists
John Freeman (ed)
Granta, PB, 9781905881635
Since Granta's inaugural list of the Best of Young British Novelists in 1983 - featuring Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes - the Best of Young issues have been some of the magazine's most influential. In 2010, Granta looked beyond the English-speaking world with Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists. Now, with its first-ever issue fully translated ... More/Buy
The Infinite Tides
Christian Kiefer
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408828038
Mathematical genius. Brilliant engineer. Revered astronaut. Keith Corcoran is all of these things and more, but his otherworldly talents do nothing to prepare him for the tragedy that befalls his family, or its irrevocable outcomes. After a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, Keith returns to a house that has already ceased to be a home - emptied entirely of ... More/Buy
It's Fine By Me
Per Petterson
Arrow, PB, 9780099548386
On his first day of school, a teacher welcomes Audun to the class by asking him to describe his former life in the country. But there are stories about his family he would prefer to keep to himself, such as the weeks he spent living in a couple of cardboard boxes, and the day of his little brother's birth, when his ... More/Buy
Jane Eyre Laid Bare
Eve Sinclair
Pan, PB, 9781447229285
The classic novel with an erotic twist. When an eager and curious Jane Eyre arrives at Thornfield house, her sexual desires are instantly awakened. Who is the enigmatic Rochester whom she instantly feels attracted to, what are the strange and yet captivating noises coming from the attic, and why does the very air she breathe feel heavy with passion? Only one ... More/Buy
Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures
Emma Straub
Picador, PB, 9781447203186
Just as The Artist sweeps the Oscars, Picador announces a captivating debut about the lure of the 1930s Hollywood, in all its dangerous glamour. When the most famous producer in Hollywood plucks seventeen-year-old Elsa Emerson from a party and gives her a brand-new name, a star of the silver screen is born. Laura Lamont. Having spent the summers of her childhood ... More/Buy
Lenin's Kisses
Yan Lianke
Text Publishing, PB, 9781922079435
Lenin's Kisses is a brilliant novel about modern China. Blind, deaf, and disfigured, the 197 citizens of the Village of Liven enjoy a peaceful lifestyle, spared from the government's watchful eye. But when an unseasonal snowstorm wipes out the grain crops, a county official convinces the villagers to set up a travelling freak-show showcasing their disabilities. With the money, he intends ... More/Buy
Life Goes On
Hans Keilson
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781922070128
Published when the author was just twenty-three, Life Goes On was Hans Keilson's literary debut, an extraordinary autobiographical novel that paints a dark yet illuminating portrait of Germany between the world wars. It tells the story of Max Seldersen - a Jewish store owner modelled on Keilson's father, a textile merchant and decorated World War I veteran - along with his ... More/Buy
A Long Day's Evening
Bilge Karasu
City Lights, PB, 9780872865914
A relationship between two Byzantine monks in the 8th-century iconoclastic period provides a meditation on faith, memory and love. The dualities of dogma and faith, custom and law, truth and lie, image and signification, individual and society, East and West, Byzantium and Rome, are embodied in a story of prohibited love and devotion to the Unseen. A Turkish ... More/Buy
The Lost Daughter
Lucretia Grindle
Pan, PB, 9780330509503
"Her past." Pallioti tapped the files. "This," he said, "is how you'll find her." In Florence, a young American student goes missing. At first neither Alessandro Pallioti, one of the city's most senior policemen, nor Enzo Saenz, his deputy, are too concerned. But soon the men are horrified to discover that the older man Kristen has been spending time with is ... More/Buy
May We Be Forgiven
A M Homes
Granta, PB, 9781847083227
Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control the result is an act ... More/Buy
McSweeney's Issue 42
Dave Eggers (ed)
McSweeneys, HB, 9781936365777
With the help of guest editor Adam Thirlwell, we've turned Issue 42 into a monumental experiment in translated literature - twelve stories taken through six translators apiece, weaving into English and then back out again, gaining new twists and textures each time, just as you'd expect a Kierkegaard story brought into English by Clancy Martin and then sent into Dutch by ... More/Buy
Monsieur
Emma Becker
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781922070111
What sort of woman has a taste for middle-aged, married men? Ellie, a university student and would-be writer, leads a carefree life in Paris until she meets Monsieur, a doctor more than twice her age. Beginning with their passionate encounter in a hotel room in the fifteenth arrondissement, Monsieur details their clandestine affair: the fleeting phone calls, the illicit meetings, the ... More/Buy
Mrs Queen Takes The Train
William Kuhn
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781743312872
Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, is growing increasingly disenchanted after her decades of public service and years of family scandal. One day, the Queen takes things into her own hands and, in a spur-of-the-moment decision, leaves the palace alone and incognito. An unlikely group of six, including two of the Queen's most trusted household staff members, William and Shirley; one of ... More/Buy
Obedience
Jacqueline Yallop
Atlantic, PB, 9780857891037
Sister Bernard has lived in a grey-stone convent in rural France for more than seventy years. In that time, a once youthful and lively cloister has gradually emptied, until only Bernard and two other nuns remain. Now, the three women pack away their few possessions into wooden boxes, preparing to leave the building that has been their home for decades. For ... More/Buy
Oh Dear Silvia
Dawn French
Michael Joseph, PB, 9780718156077
Who is in Coma Suite Number 5? A matchless lover? A supreme egotist? A selfless martyr? A bad mother? A cherished sister? A selfish wife? All of these. For this is Silvia Shute who has always done exactly what she wants. Until now, when her life suddenly, shockingly stops. Her past holds a dark and terrible secret, and now that she ... More/Buy
September: Mirage
Thomas Lehr
Seagull Books, HB, 9780857420787
Two fathers with two daughters: Martin, professor of German, writes but is studying Earth Sciences at MIT; Tariq, a doctor in Baghdad and Muna, is studying the archaeology of a region that is seen as the cradle of civilization. These two parallel relationships in two very different parts of the world expose the human similarities beneath cultural differences. In Thomas Lehr's ... More/Buy
Sutton
J R Moehringer
Harper Collins, PB, 9780007489916
Between 1925 and 1950, Willie Sutton robbed 100 banks and also broke out of three escape-proof prisons - all without firing a single shot. He was driven by two things - a lost love and the belief that bankers were the root cause of everything wrong with society. Among the most notorious criminals in American history, he spent half his life ... More/Buy
The Testament of Mary
Colm Toibin
Picador, HB, 9781742611044
In a voice that is both tender and filled with rage, The Testament of Mary tells the story of a cataclysmic event which led to an overpowering grief. For Mary, her son has been lost to the world, and now, living in exile and in fear, she tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to her son's ... More/Buy
Trail of Fire
Diana Gabaldon
Orion, PB, 9781409144489
Four extraordinary stories featuring characters from the bestselling Outlander. In Lord John & the Plague of Zombies, Lord John Grey is posted to Jamaica to assist the Governor as he faces a most unusual kind of uprising among the colony's slave population. In The Space Between, Jamie Fraser's step-daughter, Joan, is on her way to an abbey in Paris to become ... More/Buy
Two Brothers
Ben Elton
Bantam, PB, 9780593062067
Berlin 1920 Two babies are born. Two brothers. United and indivisible, sharing everything. Twins in all but blood. As Germany marches into its Nazi Armageddon, the ties of family, friendship and love are tested to the very limits of endurance. And the brothers are faced with an unimaginable choice.... Which one of them will survive? Ben Elton's most personal novel to ... More/Buy
The Unreal and the Real: Where on Earth Selected Stories Volume 1
Ursula K Le Guin
Small Beer Press, HB, 9781618730343
Ursula K. Le Guin's stories have shaped the way many readers see the world. By giving voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaking truth to power - all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor - she has proven herself one of our greatest writers. This two-volume selection is a much-anticipated event and will delight, amuse, ... More/Buy
The Unreal and the Real: Outer Space, Inner Lands Selected Stories Vol 2
Ursula K Le Guin
Small Beer Press, HB, 9781618730350
A must for every reader: two volumes of Ursula K. Le Guin's short stories as selected by the ... More/Buy
White Truffles in Winter
N M Kelby
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781846882074
How does one define the complexity of love on a single plate? N. M. Kelby brings us the sensuality of food and love amid a world on the verge of war in this work that shimmers with beauty and longing. White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who changed how we eat through ... More/Buy
Winters in the South
Norbert Gstrein
Maclehose Press, PB, 9781906694319
As ethnic tensions escalate into war, Marija returns in confusion to her native Croatia - call it a mid-life crisis. She soon takes up with a young soldier, but her age does not give her the least power over him. On the other side of the world, her estranged father is gearing up to enter the fray, raising the cash to ... More/Buy