Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star's palace, this is a new collection of short stories from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
In a Summer Season is one of Elizabeth Taylor's finest novels in which, in a moving and powerful climax, she reveals love to be the thing it is: beautiful, often funny, and sometimes tragic.
'Gibbons is superb on middle class life' SAM JORDISON, GUARDIAN 'A sharp-edged romantic comedy, we have a chance to see what we've been missing' DAILY MAIL 'What luxury to stumble upon this quirky book, and the fascinating modern woman who wrote it' SOPHIE DAHLLife is not quite a fairytale for poor Viola.
The beautiful, spoiled and bored Olivia, married to a civil servant, outrages society in the tiny, suffocating town of Satipur by eloping with an Indian prince.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE LOST MAN BOOKER PRIZE'Nina Bawden gets inside the skins of all her people and shows them as paradoxical, crotchety, adulterous, ambitious and completely human .
'This is the off-side of lust in plush suburbia, described by a crypto-moralist with a mischievous sense of humour' SUNDAY TIMES'A born story-teller' INDEPENDENT 'The modest and moderating virtues of Nina Bawden's novels can easily be demonstrated by her earlier title, The Grain of Truth' KIRKUS REVIEWS Emma's anxious and manipulative plea, 'Someone listen to me', opens - and closes - this deliciously uncomfortable novel in which Nina Bawden explores myriad emotional disguises with her characteristic acuity.
'Bawden has concentrated on the careful depiction of character, feelings and behaviour' GUARDIAN 'On every page there is a shock of recognition' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Among the most perceptive and accomplished novelists writing today' P.
'Absorbing and quietly uncompromising, redolent with the vibrant smells and colours of Majorca, and of Spain' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A highly revealing account, not only of a woman's life, but of a whole extraordinary passage in one contemporary European country' FINANCIAL TIMES'Nina Bawden is one of the really attractive practitioners of the genre the feminine novel-not a dismissive referral in her case' KIRKUS REVIEWS Elizabeth and Richard, are on holiday in Morocco, travelling from its fertile coast to the barren uplands beyond the Atlas mountains.
'One of the wisest and most versatile of our novelists' CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, GUARDIAN 'So intelligent and clear-eyed that every page seems to peel another layer of pretence' ISABEL QUIGLEY, FINANCIAL TIMES'Nina Bawden's novels are self-perpetuating pleasures' KIRKUS REVIEWS'Today, Tuesday, the day that Penelope has chosen to leave her husband, is the first really warm day of spring .
'A born story-teller' INDEPENDENT 'Nina Bawden has always presented such ingratiating characters that you wonder, distantly, at her interest in Anna' KIRKUS REVIEWS'Throughout her career Bawden has concentrated on the careful depiction of character, feelings and behaviour' GUARDIANWho is Anna?
A RIVETING STORY FROM ONE OF AFRICA'S MOST IMPORTANT WOMAN WRITERS 'When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru are fairy tales about the transformations that love can wreak.
'A sheer delight from start to finish' Sophie Kinsella***WINNER OF THE RNA ROMANTIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD 2013***Can you hear the jangle of pocket money, the rustle of striped paper bags .
As well as its advantages, there are drawbacks to the enlightened village that is twenty-first-century Edinburgh, where every Saturday night ears burn at dinner parties across the city, and anyone requiring the investigative abilities of a philosophical soul knows where to find her.
Despite inhabiting a great city renowned for its impeccable restraint, the extended family of 44 Scotland Street is trembling on the brink of reckless self-indulgence.
Mr Ali's flourishing marriage bureau seems to have chalked up another success when his ward, Pari, receives a surprise proposal from a rich, handsome aristocrat.
Mrs Ali's much loved home is suddenly under threat - a road widening scheme threatens to destroy both it and the family business, the Marriage Bureau for Rich People.
Seventeen-year-old Veronica 'Ronnie' Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina.
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'She wrote exciting plots, she was highly skilled at arousing suspense' GUARDIAN'The novel explores incest in a manner that is entirely unexpected for that period' JUSTINE PICARDIE 'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'His first instinct was to stretch out his hands to the sky.
A HEART-BREAKING, HOPEFUL NOVEL FROM THE MASTER STORYTELLER WHOSE BOOKS HAVE TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF OVER 40 MILLION READERSPre-order Mitch Albom's new novel, Twice, now - a beautiful and heartbreaking exploration of lost loves and second chances.
Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher and amateur solver of other people's problems, meets an old foe, Minty Auchterlonie, at a birthday party attended by their young children.
To the casual observer, the great enlightened city of Edinburgh, home of no-nonsense philosophers and cream teas, might appear immune to the rollercoaster of strong emotions.
