Time period: 20th century

Born in 1920, in the landscape of post-World War 1 Ukraine, her family driven to a distant country by the fearsome pogroms that killed her mother and ruined her father, Clarice Lispector triumphed over her origins to become a person whose beauty, genius, and eccentricity intrigues all of Brazil's...

This is Susie Hodge's passionate and persuasive argument against the most common disparaging remark levelled at modern art. She examines 100 works of modern art that have attracted critical and public hostility from Cy Twomblys scribbled 'Olympia' (1957) to Tracey Emins's 'My Bed' (1998).

Peter Wicks brings his memoirs to life with a riot of colourful stories. From picnics with his parents via school days and bullies to spending summer holidays with his grandmother, his tales are a charming look at a wartime childhood.

Freddy Otash is the man in the know and the man to know in '50s L.A. He operates with two simple rules - he'll do anything but commit murder and he'll never work with the commies. Freddy is an ex-L.A. cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood - and it got to him bad. So Chief Willia...

Freddy Otash is the man in the know and the man to know in '50s L.A. He operates with two simple rules - he'll do anything but commit murder and he'll never work with the commies. Freddy is an ex-L.A. cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood - and it got to him bad. So Chief Willia...

1949, County Durham. From the Shipyards of Sunderland to Lady of the Manor. When Angie marries her sweetheart Quentin and moves into Cuthford Manor to begin their new life together, she feels like the luckiest woman in the world. But Quentin falls victim to a tragic accident and Angie's life is l...

1949, County Durham. From the Shipyards of Sunderland to Lady of the Manor. When Angie marries her sweetheart Quentin and moves into Cuthford Manor to begin their new life together, she feels like the luckiest woman in the world. But Quentin falls victim to a tragic accident and Angie's life is l...

Lancashire 1934. Three years after her husband's sudden death, Stella comes into some money unexpectedly and decides to make a new start in the country. She settles on Ellin Valley, where she quickly begins to make friends. She falls in love with a cottage in Birch End, but an unscrupulous man wa...

Lancashire 1934. Three years after her husband's sudden death, Stella comes into some money unexpectedly and decides to make a new start in the country. She settles on Ellin Valley, where she quickly begins to make friends. She falls in love with a cottage in Birch End, but an unscrupulous man wa...

Lancashire, 1934. Three years after her husband's sudden death, Stella comes into some money unexpectedly and decides to make a new start in the country. She falls in love with a cottage in Birch End, but an unscrupulous man wants it too. Life also changes drastically for local handyman Wilf Poll...

Lancashire 1934. Three years after her husband's sudden death, Stella comes into some money unexpectedly and decides to make a new start in the country. She settles on Ellin Valley, where she quickly begins to make friends. She falls in love with a cottage in Birch End, but an unscrupulous man wa...

Kate Channer thought married life was going to be a grand adventure. But when Luke ships off for war before the echoes of their vows have ended, she's left behind, desperate to do something to make a difference and help bring him home. Yet life in Devon and London spent as ladies-maid to her half...

Kate Channer thought married life was going to be a grand adventure. But when Luke ships off for war before the echoes of their vows have ended, she's left behind, desperate to do something to make a difference and help bring him home. Yet life in Devon and London spent as ladies-maid to her half...

Valentine, a blind, confused and dying old man, seeking peace with God, makes his last confession to a friend, Thomas Lyon, mistaking him for a priest. This puts Thomas in a moral dilemma and his life in danger.

Wesley published her first novel when she was 70 - and went on to write nine more bestsellers before her death, age 89, in 2002. At the outbreak of WWII, she was 'roped into intelligence', where she worked on breaking codes. This biography deals with her experiences in MI5 and her many wartime lo...

In 1923, four short years since the end of the First World War, and after the passing of the Act which gave all men the vote, an inconclusive election result and the prospect of a constitutional crisis opened the door for a radically different sort of government: men from working-class background...

Here is a poem that can make even readers with no time for poetry stop dead in their tracks. Once read, large shards of this story of one night of debauchery will become permanently lodged in the brain.

'Wild Swans' tells the story of three women - Jung Chang, her mother and grandmother - whose fortunes mirror the tumultuous history of 20th-century China.

A Chinese woman chronicles the struggle of her grandmother, mother, and herself in a China torn apart by wars, invasions, revolution, and continuing upheaval, from 1907 to the present.