Fiction & related items

Molly's 70th birthday comes as something of a shock. The woman in the mirror certainly looks every day of those 70 years, but inside Molly feels she still has so much more living left to do. Widowed and living alone with her cat Crumper, Molly fears she is slipping into a cliche of old age. When ...

Homicide Detective Kit McKittrick finds herself standing over a dead body in the Shady Oaks retirement centre. Frank Flynn has been stabbed and his room ransacked. Though he kept his background quiet at the centre, Kit recognises Frank from the San Diego Police Department. Had the former detectiv...

Homicide Detective Kit McKittrick finds herself standing over a dead body in the Shady Oaks retirement centre. Frank Flynn has been stabbed and his room ransacked. Though he kept his background quiet at the centre, Kit recognises Frank from the San Diego Police Department. Had the former detectiv...

Leo Tolstoy embarked on 'Childhood, Boyhood, Youth' in his early 20s. Though he later regarded his first published sketches as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', they provide a highly expressive self-portrait which makes clear the man and the writer Tolstoy was to become.

Mehar, a young bride in rural Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. It is 1929, and she and her sisters-in-law - married to three brothers in a single ceremony - spend their days hard at work on the family farm, sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a...

One afternoon, in a little farmhouse in rural Virginia, the ailing Marie Shaw dies in ambiguous circumstances and nothing is ever the same again for the seven young children she left behind. Spanning from the Great Depression to the burgeoning of US counterculture in 1959, 'Chorus' sensitively tr...

One afternoon, in a little farmhouse in rural Virginia, the ailing Marie Shaw dies in ambiguous circumstances and nothing is ever the same again for the seven young children she left behind. Spanning from the Great Depression to the burgeoning of US counterculture in 1959, 'Chorus' sensitively tr...

One Wednesday morning in November 1912 the ageing Thomas Hardy finds his wife Emma dying in her bedroom. Between his speaking to her and taking her in his arms, she has gone. The day before, he and Emma had exchanged bitter words - leading Hardy to wonder whether all husbands and wives end up as ...

Scrooge is the meanest man alive, but three night-time visitors are trying to change his ways. This classic Christmas story has been specially retold for little children to enjoy. The delightful illustrations are full of extra details to spot.

It's the perfect Christmas love story. Margot Murray is a newly single, high-flying businesswoman with no interest in a cutesy seasonal romance. Ben Gibson is an unlucky-in-love sweetheart in need of a woman to bring home for the holidays. Together, they make a pact: Margot gets two blissful week...