Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
A seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, that tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than 20 years of Japan's most dramatic...
The Siege
Helen Dunmore
Leningrad, September 1941. Hitler orders the German forces to surround the city at the start of the most dangerous, desperate winter in its history. For two pairs of...
Death at the Wedding Feast
Deryn Lake
Apothecary John Rawlings has travelled to Devon to be by the side of his mistress, Elizabeth di Lorenzi, who is due to give birth to their child. Leaving...
Half Blood Blues
Esi Edugyan
The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymous Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a cafe and never heard from again. He...
Spies of the Balkans
Alan Furst
Salonika, 1940. To the bustle of tavernas and the smell of hashish, a secret war is taking shape. In the backrooms of barbers, envelopes change hands, and in...
Blow on a Dead Man's Embers
Mari Strachan
In the aftermath of the Great War, Non Davies wakes one morning to find her husband crouching under the kitchen table in a cold sweat and with fear...
Death in Hellfire
Deryn Lake
When John Rawlings is asked to investigate a secret club and some shady goings-on, he is intrigued. The disreputable Sir Francis Dashwood is believed to be involved, as...
The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje
The final curtain is closing on the Second World War, and Hana, a nurse, stays behind in an abandoned Italian villa to tend to her only remaining patient....
Martyr
Rory Clements
England is close to war. Within days the axe could fall on the neck of Mary Queen of Scots, and Spain is already gathering a battle fleet to...
Revenger
Rory Clements
1592. England and Spain are at war, yet there is peril at home, too. The death of her trusted spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham has left Queen Elizabeth vulnerable....
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
David Mitchell
Be transported to a place like no other: a tiny, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki, for 200 years the sole gateway between Japan and the West....
Suite Française
Irène Némirovsky
In June 1940 France fell to the Nazis. The effects of this momentous event on the lives of ordinary Parisians and the inhabitants of a small rural community...
The Winter King
Bernard Cornwell
Uther, the High King of Britain, has died, leaving the infant Mordred as his only heir. His uncle, the loyal and gifted warlord Arthur, now rules as caretaker...
Dancing in the Dark
Maureen Lee
Millie Cameron is not at all pleased when she finds herself obliged to sort through the belongings of her aunt Flo, who recently died. She hardly knew her...
Nothing Lasts Forever
Maureen Lee
Brodie Logan's seemingly idyllic life with her once-loving husband is suddenly turned upside down - so she moves to a big shared house in Liverpool, and there meets...
Remarkable Creatures
Tracy Chevalier
In the early 19th century, a windswept beach along the English coast brims with fossils for those with the eye. From the moment she's struck by lightning as...
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters
In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries,...
The Postmistress
Sarah Blake
It is 1940, and bombs fall nightly on London. In the thick of the chaos is young American radio reporter Frankie Bard. She huddles close to terrified strangers...
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told. Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, wrestles...
The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles
Of all John Fowles's novels, The French Lieutenant's Woman received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature....
Birdsong
Sebastian Faulks
Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen,...
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
''Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks'...
The Winter Ghosts
Kate Mosse
From the bestselling author of Labyrinth and Sepulchre - a compelling story of ghosts and remembrance. The Great War took much more than lives. It robbed a generation...
Interview with the Vampire
Anne Rice
In a darkened room, a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life - the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed...
Train to Budapest
Dacia Maraini
1956: Amara, a young Italian journalist, is sent to report on the growing political divide between East and West in post-war central Europe. She also has a more...
The Historian
Elizabeth Kostova
Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters addressed ominously to 'My dear and unfortunate successor'....
The Lacuna
Barbara Kingsolver
The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America. Born in the U.S....
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels,...
The Pillars of the Earth
Ken Follett
'The Pillars of the Earth' tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has...
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian...
The Night Calls
David Pirie
While a young medical student at Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle famously studied under the remarkable Dr Joseph Bell, who was a pioneer in criminal investigation. The Night Calls...
Daughters of the House
Michèle Roberts
Secrets and lies linger in the very walls of the solid old Normandy house where Therese and Leonie, French and English cousins, grow up after the war. Intrigued...
Alias Grace
Margaret Atwood
'Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling...
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth...
The Night Watch
Sarah Waters
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work...
The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's...
Falling Angels
Tracy Chevalier
A sumptuous new look for the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. 1901, the year of Queen Victoria's death. The two graves stood next to each...
The Other Boleyn girl
Philippa Gregory
Fabulous historical novel set in the court of King Henry VIII. Mary Boleyn attracts the attention of the young king and becomes his mistress; when he tires of...
Lancaster and York
The Wars of the roses
Alison Weir
The war between the houses of Lancaster and York for the throne of England was characterised by treachery, deceit and at St Albans, Blore Hill and Towton, some...
Sophia's Secret
Susanna Kearsley
When bestselling author Carrie McClelland visits the windswept ruins of Slains Castle, she is enchanted by the stark and beautiful Scottish landscape. The area is strangely familiar to...
The Last Kingdom (Alfred the Great 1)
Bernard Cornwell
The first book in a brand new series, The Last Kingdom is set in England during the reign of King Alfred. Uhtred is an English boy, born into...
The Chatelet Apprentice
Jean-Francois Parot
Its France, 1761. Beyond the glittering court of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour at Versailles, lies Paris, a capital in the grip of crime and immorality... A...
Lights Out Liverpool
Maureen Lee
As Britain stands alone against a monstrous enemy, the inhabitants of Pearl Street face hardship and heartbreak with courage and humour. The war touches each of them in...
A Mother's Spirit
Anne Bennett
From rural rags to brief riches and back to ruin, this is a moving saga of hard work, bad luck and finally hope for a family's future. Gloria...
What I Saw and How I Lied
Judy Blundell
Fifteen- year-old Evie has always felt over shadowed by her mother’s movie-star looks but as American society begins to shake off the austerity of World War II, Evie...
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