1920. Seventeen-year-old Sophie is a scullery maid at a large country house, Belfield Hall, but what she truly desires is to dance on stage in London.

Caught up in a dangerous game
Glamorous Lady Beatrice offers her assistance, though not without an ulterior motive. A new heir - the seductively handsome Lord Ashley - is about to arrive at the Hall: a man that Beatrice will do anything to ensnare . . . even if she has to exploit her young maid.

Of forbidden passion
What she doesn't know is that Sophie has met Ash once before. And as Lady Beatrice's devious plan unravels, Sophie has two choices: refuse to be a mere plaything for the man she loves so desperately, or give in to the thrill of unimaginable sexual pleasure .

Set in Poland in the present and during the Second World War, The Beautiful Truth is an unforgettable novel of families, heroism and of the possibilities of finding late love. For readers of Helen Dunmore, Sadie Jones and Rose Tremain.'A thrillingly observant writer and crafter of highly sensual prose' Daily MailCatherine never knew her father. A Polish exile, he disappeared when she was a small child, leaving her only a pair of binoculars and a lifelong love of the stars. Now in her forties, she leads a settled academic life in Cambridge - until one day she receives a letter with a Polish postmark from an American film-maker who is in Krakow to research the wartime experiences of his aunt. What Konrad has uncovered will send Catherine on a voyage of discovery not only into Poland's past, but into her own history. And what she uncovers there will change her life in ways she could not possibly have imagined.

Each year the storyteller Hassan gathers listeners to the city square to share their recollections of a young foreign couple who mysteriously disappeared some time ago. As various witnesses describe their encounters with the couple – their tales overlapping, confirming and contradicting each other – Hassan hopes to light upon details that will explain what happened to them, and clear his own brother of any involvement in their disappearance. As testimonies circle an elusive truth, the couple take on an air as enigmatic as their fate. But is this annual storytelling ritual a genuine attempt to uncover the truth, or is it intended instead to weave an ambiguous mythology around a crime?

Three rich young Englishmen cross pre-World War II Europe in an old car with a mixture of laugh-out-loud humor and perceptive commentary on art and architecture. Turning a corner we suddenly found ourselves sliding down a precipice, tilted so far forward that it was necessary to hold ourselves back with our hands pressed against the dashboard, as half a dozen Apennine valleys beckoned invitingly below. Here [St Peter’s] Popes with black faces and golden crowns are wallowing twice life-size in the titanic folds of marble tablecloths, their ormolu fringes festooning upon the arms of graceful skeletons to disclose some Alice-in-Wonderland door or the grim hinges of some sepulchral grill . . .

Best known as the author of The Road to Oxiana, published in 1937, Robert Byron had developed his considerable writing skills on this travel book which has not been in print since 1926. It describes a journey Byron made with three friends, driving across Europe between two world wars, and mixes political and historical analysis with architectural insights, classical scholarship, and the day-to-day adventures of three young and not very experienced travelers. For fans of Robert Byron’s work this will be a discovery; for others it will be an introduction. Includes nine original sketches made by the author during his travels.

In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of resistance.

Looking back after the fall, an orphan recalls with haunting clarity the handful of fleeting moments that came to define him – furtive, thwarted passions played out under the watchful eye of Communism. Lost to introspection, he stumbles upon the truth behind the life of Dmitri Ress – for fifteen years a guest of the state – whose tragic fate embodies the unbreakable bond between love and freedom.

Summer, 1914. Young Englishwoman Vivian Rose Spencer is in an ancient land, about to discover the Temple of Zeus, the call of adventure, and love. Thousands of miles away a twenty-year-old Pathan, Qayyum Gul, is learning about brotherhood and loyalty in the British Indian army.

Summer, 1915. Viv has been separated from the man she loves; Qayyum has lost an eye at Ypres. They meet on a train to Peshawar, unaware that a connection is about to be forged between their lives - one that will reveal itself fifteen years later when anti-colonial resistance, an ancient artefact and a mysterious woman will bring them together again.

A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd - would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather - as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians risktheir bodies and hearts in search of connection - some key to understanding what makes us the people we become. Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks's dazzling novel journeys across continents and time to explore the chaos created by love, separation and missed opportunities. From the pain and drama of these highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation:the chance to feel your heart beat in someone else's life.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes and dreams of a young girl. She suspects it might have arrived on a drift of debris from the 2011 tsunami. With every turn of the page, she is sucked deeper into an enchanting mystery. In a small cafe in Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao Yasutani is navigating the challenges thrown up by modern life. In the face of cyberbullying, the mysteries of a 104-year-old Buddhist nun and great-grandmother, and the joy and heartbreak of family, Nao is trying to find her own place - and voice - through a diary she hopes will find a reader and friend who finally understands her. Weaving across continents and decades, and exploring the relationship between reader and writer, fact and fiction, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.

The royal house of France has fallen. Charles IV is dead, fulfilling thecurse of the Templars once and for all. This leaves the path to the throne open for Robert of Artois to place his cousin, Philippe of Valois, upon it. Having committed fraud, perjury and murder in the name of the new king, Robert expects to receive a title and his full reward.

Ruth Becker, defiant and cantankerous, is living out her days in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. She has made an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past—and a part of history that has been all but forgotten. Another lifetime away, it’s 1939 and the world is going to war. Ernst Toller, self-doubting revolutionary and poet, sits in a New York hotel room, settling up the account of his life.When Toller’s story arrives on Ruth’s doorstep, their shared past slips under her defences, and she’s right back among them—those friends who predicted the brutality of the Nazis and gave everything they had to stop them. Those who were tested—and in some cases found wanting—in the face of hatred, of art, of love and of history.

In this stunning final work of fiction, the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich introduces an astonishing set of characters whose day-to-day lives are transformed under the pressures of Soviet rule. These stories confirm Solzhenitsyn's position alongside Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Babel as one of Russia's greatest writers.

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby...

Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life.

For sixteen days in the summer of 1936, the world’s attention turned to the German capital as it hosted the Olympic Games. Seen through the eyes of a cast of characters – Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats, athletes and journalists, nightclub owners and jazz musicians – Berlin 1936 plunges us into the high tension of this unfolding scene. Alongside the drama in the Olympic Stadium – from the triumph of Jesse Owens to the scandal when an American tourist breaks through the security and manages to kiss Hitler – Oliver Hilmes takes us behind the scenes and into the lives of ordinary Berliners: the woman with a dark secret who steps in front of a train, the transsexual waiting for the Gestapo’s knock on the door, and the Jewish boy hoping that Germany may lose in the sporting arena. During the sporting events the dictatorship was partially put on hold; here then, is a last glimpse of the vibrant and diverse life in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s that the Nazis aimed to destroy.

It was to be the battle to end the air war once and for all. During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces launched their first-ever round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. The aim was to smash the main factories and production centres of the Luftwaffe and at the same time draw the German fighter force up into the air and into battle.

A Chernobyl survivor and award-winning historian "mercilessly
chronicles the absurdities of the Soviet system" in this "vividly
empathetic" account of the worst nuclear accident in history (The Wall Street Journal).

They were the new icons of rock and roll, fated to burn bright and not fade away. But on 12 July 1979, it all came crashing down.
There was Daisy, rock and roll force of nature, brilliant songwriter and unapologetic drug addict, the half-feral child who rose to superstardom.
There was Camila, the frontman's wife, too strong-willed to let the band implode - and all too aware of the electric connection between her husband and Daisy.
There was Karen, ice-cool keyboardist, a ferociously independent woman in a world that wasn't ready for her. And there were the men surrounding them: the feuding, egotistical Dunne brothers, the angry guitarist chafing on the sidelines, the drummer binge-drinking on his boat, the bassist trying to start a family amid a hedonistic world tour. They were creative minds striking sparks
from each other, ready to go up in flames.

It's never just about the music...

London, 1941. Amid the falling bombs Emmeline Lake dreams of becoming a fearless Lady War Correspondent. Unfortunately, Emmy instead finds herself employed as a typist for the formidable Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt at Woman’s Friend magazine. Mrs Bird refuses to read, let alone answer, letters containing any form of Unpleasantness, and definitely not those from the lovelorn, grief-stricken or morally conflicted.

But the thought of these desperate women waiting for an answer at this most desperate of times becomes impossible for Emmy to ignore. She decides she simply must help and secretly starts to write back – after all, what harm could that possibly do?

Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair.Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

Tomorrow is another day . . . Set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Civil War, Margaret Mitchell's magnificent historical epic is an unforgettable tale of love and loss, of a nation mortally divided and a people forever changed. Above all, it is the story of beautiful, ruthless Scarlett O'Hara and the dashing soldier of fortune, Rhett Butler. Since its first publication in 1936, Gone With The Wind has endured as a story for all our times.

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011, Nicole Krauss's Great House is a haunting story that explores loss and memory. In New York a woman spends the night with a young Chilean poet before he departs, leaving her at his desk. Later, he is arrested by Pinochet's secret police. . . In north London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. . . In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer reassembles his father's study plundered by Nazis.

In spring of 1905 in England, a brief romance between Helen Schlegel and Paul Wilcox ends badly, their two very different families are brought into collision. The liberal, intellectual Schlegels, who had hoped never to see the capitalist, pragmatic Wilcoxes again, learn that Paul's family are moving from their country estate - Howards End - to a flat just across the road. As the lives of the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes become increasingly entangled, Helen befriends Leonard Bast, a man of lower social status. His presence further inflames the families' political and cultural differences, which are brought to a head in a fatal confrontation at Howards End.

Desperate to prove himself to his politician father, Esmond Lowndes is sent to Italy to forge ties between the British Union of Fascists and Mussolini's government. In Florence, he discovers art and passion amongst the eccentric expatriates and glamorous locals. But with the coming of war Esmond chooses to leave his past behind and joins the Florentine resistance. Finding himself closely bound to his comrades and unexpectedly in love, Esmond becomes involved in undercover operations and assassination plots, culminating in a final mission of extraordinary daring.

Longlisted for the Orange Prize 2012. 1830. Neil and Lizzie MacKenzie, a newly married young couple, arrive at the remotest part of the British Isles: St Kilda. He is a minister determined to save the souls of the pagan inhabitants; his pregnant wife speaks no Gaelic and, when her husband is away, has only the waves and the cry of gulls for company. As both find themselves tested to the limit in this harsh new environment,Lizzie soon discovers that marriage is as treacherous a country as the land that surrounds her.

South Africa, 1953. The National Party’s rigid race laws have split the nation and a gruelling poverty grips many on the edges of its society. When former Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper stumbles across the body of a child, Jolly Marks, at the Durban docks, he can little imagine what the discovery will lead him to. Soon Cooper finds himself under suspicion for not only Jolly’s murder, but others as well. The only way he can clear his name is to find out who the real killer was – and he’s got 48 hours in which to do it.

It begins in the office of The Hat Creek Cattle Company of the Rio Grande.It ends as a journey into the heart of every adventurer who ever lived . . .From the author of The Last Picture Show and Texasville - here is Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece. A powerful, triumphant portrayal of the American West as it really was.More than a love story, more than an adventure, Lonesome Dove is an epic: a monumental novel which embraces the spirit of the last defiant wilderness of America.

A wonderfully original, emotionally complex novel that delves into why Cassandra burned a treasure trove of letters written by her sister, Jane Austen – an act of destruction that has troubled academics for centuries.1840: twenty three years after the death of her famous sister Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of her family’s friends, the Fowles. She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache of family letters which hold secrets she is desperate should not be revealed. As Cassandra recalls her youth and her relationship with her brilliant yet complex sister, she pieces together buried truths about Jane’s history, and her own. And she faces a stark choice: should she act to protect Jane’s reputation? Or leave the contents of the letters to go unguarded into posterity … Based on a literary mystery that has long puzzled biographers and academics, Miss Austen is a wonderfully original and emotionally complex novel about the loves and lives of Cassandra and Jane Austen.

It's the day before Mike Frame's fiftieth birthday and his quiet provincial life is suddenly falling apart. But perhaps it doesn't matter, because it's not his life in the first place. He has a past that his partner Miranda and step-daughter Sam know nothing about, lived under another name amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary armed struggle of the 1970s. Now Mike is seeing ghosts - a dead ex-lover and an old friend who wants to reminisce. Mike can no longer ignore the contradiction between who he is and who he once was. Which side was he on back then? And which side is he on now?

Babe, Grace and Millie have been best friends since their first day at kindergarten. Now they are newly married, and the men have gone to war. They thrive on letters from their absent sweethearts, and on the closeness they've always shared. And then, on a single morning in 1944, no fewer than sixteen telegrams arrive, bringing news of the worst kind from the War Department. For Babe, Grace and Millie, life will never be the same again.

Three very different girls sign up as student nurses in 1936, while England is still mourning the death of George V. Dora is a tough East Ender, driven by ambition, but also desperate to escape her squalid, overcrowded home and her abusive stepfather. Helen is the quiet one, a mystery to her fellow nurses, avoiding fun, gossip and the limelight. In fact she is in the formidable shadow of her overbearing mother, who dominates every aspect of her life. Can a nursing career free Helen at last? The third of our heroines is naughty, rebellious Millie an aristocrat on the run from her conventional upper class life. She is doomed to clash over and over again with terrifying Sister Hyde and to get into scrape after scrape especially where men are concerned. This utterly delightful novel brings a London pre-war hospital vividly to life.

City of love. City of splendour. City of terror. City of dreams. Inspired by the haunting, passionate story of the city of lights, this epic novel weaves a gripping tale of four families across the centuries: from the lies that spawn the noble line of de Cygne to the revolutionary Le Sourds who seek their destruction; from the Blanchards whose bourgeois respectability offers scant protection against scandal to the hard-working Gascons and their soaring ambitions. Over hundreds of years, these four families are bound by forbidden loves and marriages of convenience; dogged by vengeance and murderous secrets; torn apart by the irreconcilable differences of birth and faith, and brought together by the tumultuous history of their city. Paris bursts to life in the intrigue, corruption and glory of its people. Beloved author of Sarum, London and New York, Edward Rutherfurd illuminates Paris as only he can: capturing the romance and everyday drama of the men and women who, in two thousand years, transformed a humble trading post on the muddy banks of the Seine into the most celebrated city in the world.

Sarah and Jack have never doubted that they are made for each other. But there is someone in Sarah's family who will not tolerate the relationship. The reason lies in both the past and the present, and it will take Sarah across an ocean to a place she never imagined she would be. Kate Grenville takes us back to the Australia of The Secret River in this novel about love, tangled histories and how it matters to keep stories alive.

In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler

There's a woman here who wishes to be introduced to you Mr Pemberton ... I should caution you, though. She has frightened off every other bachelor in Boston . . . Just remember you were warned, just as I've warned her.

1929. George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the wilds of the North Carolina mountains to build a life together in a rural logging town. Unlike any woman the timber empire has ever seen, Serena oversees crews, hunts rattlesnakes and saves her husband's life in the wilderness. But when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, the Pemberton's intensely passionate marriage begins to unravel. A course of events unfolds that will change the lives of everyone in their rural community and bring this riveting tale of love and revenge to its shocking reckoning.

One of the finest historical novels written by anyone, anywhere . . . Flawless' - David MitchellFather Rodrigues is an idealistic Portuguese Jesuit priest who, in the 1640s, sets sail for Japan on a determined mission to help the brutally oppressed Japanese Christians and to discover the truth behind unthinkable rumours that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith. Once faced with the realities of religious persecution Rodrigues himself is forced to make an impossible choice: whether to abandon his flock or his God.

Sir Alfred Munnings, retiring President of the Royal Academy, chooses the 1949 Annual Banquet to launch a savage attack on Modern Art. The effect of his diatribe is doubly shocking, leaving not only his distinguished audience gasping but also many people tuning in to the BBC's live radio broadcast. But as he approaches the end of his assault, the speech suddenly dissolves into incoherence when he stumbles over a name - a name he normally takes such pains to avoid - that takes him back forty years to a special time and a special place.

The story of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is very difficult to describe. Usually we give some clues about the book on the cover, but in this case we think that would spoil the reading of the book. We think it is important that you start to read without knowing what it is about. If you do start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy called Bruno. And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence. We hope you never have to cross such a fence.

In the depths of a nineteenth-century winter, a little girl is abandoned in the narrow streets of London. Adopted by a mysterious stranger, she becomes in turn a thief, a friend, a muse, and a lover. Then, in the summer of 1862, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she retreats with a group of artists to a beautiful house on a quiet bend of the Upper Thames . . . Tensions simmer and one hot afternoon a gun-shot rings out. A woman is killed, another disappears, and the truth of what happened slips through the cracks of time. Over the next century and beyond, Birchwood Manor welcomes many newcomers but guards its secret closely - until another young woman is drawn to visit the house because of a family secret of her own . . .

The crackle of a tannoy breaks a pregnant silence... ...and for one moment, as the barrage of shell and artillery pauses, music washes over the city of Leningrad. The defiant symphony of Leningrad's famous son, the composer Shostakovich, infiltrates ruined homes and businesses, echoing in the empty streets, and, perhaps, even beyond the besieged walls to the very heart of the German forces. But this is not the story of Shostakovich. This is the story of a man caught in the white heat of obsession. A man who inspired an entire city, much less a ragged orchestra of half-starved musicians, to an act of resistance and hope in a time of war.

The Danish Girl is now a major motion picture starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, directed by Tom Hooper. Loosely inspired by a true story, this tender portrait of marriage asks: What do you do when the person you love has to change? It starts with a question, a simple favour asked by a wife of her husband while both are painting in their studio, setting off a transformation neither can anticipate.

Cate discovers hidden in the back of one of the bookshelves, an old shoebox containing an exquisite pair of silk dancing shoes from the 1930's along with a mysterious collection of objects - a diamond brooch, a photograph of a handsome young sailor, a dance card, and a beautiful pearl and emerald bracelet from Tiffany's.

Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl, Edie's mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Millderhurst Castle with the Blythefamily. Fifty years later, Edie too is drawn to Milderhurst and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together,the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiance in 1941 plunged her into madness.

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. Rescued by Bedouins from a burning plane, he is English, anonymous, damaged beyond recognition and haunted by his memories of passion and betrayal.The only clue Hana has to his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire - a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes describing a painful and ultimately tragic love affair.

The final curtain is closing on the Second World War and in an abandoned Italian village. Hana, a nurse, tends to her sole remaining patient. Rescued from a burning plane, the anonymous Englishman is damaged beyond recognition and haunted by painful memories. The only clue Hana has to unlocking his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire – a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes detailing a tragic love affair.

The International Bestseller Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012 Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction 2013 Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 Shortlisted for the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 'With ravishing sensuousness, it conjures up the lush landscapes and tea estates of Malaya during the 1950s Emergency . . . A haunting novel about memory' Sunday Times Books of the Year In the highlands of Malaya, a woman sets out to build a memorial to her sister, killed at the hands of the Japanese during the brutal Occupation of their country. Yun Ling's quest leads her to The Garden of Evening Mists, and to Aritomo, a man of extraordinary skill and reputation, once the gardener of the Emperor of Japan. When she accepts his offer to become his apprentice, she begins a journey into her past, inextricably linked with the secrets of her troubled country's history.

If you're lost, they'll find you...Evie Boyd is fourteen and desperate to be noticed. It's the summer of 1969 and restless, empty days stretch ahead of her. Until she sees them. The girls. Hair long and uncombed, jewelry catching the sun. And at their centre, Suzanne, black-haired and beautiful. If not for Suzanne, she might not have gone. But, intoxicated by her and the life she promises, Evie follows the girls back to the decaying ranch where they live. Was there a warning? A sign of what was coming? Or did Evie know already that there was no way back?

High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for new lyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child.

Iran, 1950. Spring has arrived, and as the women prepare the festivities, Sadiq waits for a suitor to knock on the door. Her uncle Nosrat returns from Tehran with a glamorous woman, while on the rooftop, Shahbal longs only for a television to watch the first moon landing. But not even the beloved grandmothers can foresee what will happen in the days and months to come. The household is set to experience great love and loss as it opens its doors to faith and politics.

In this uplifting bestseller, Kader Abdolah charts the triumphs and tragedies of a family on the brink of revolution.

Alice Safford is a lost soul. Raised in Hong Kong by a monstrous mother and high-ranking father, she is neglected by her parents and indifferent siblings. Twenty-five years later during the Japanese occupation, Lin Shui, a young Chinese girl, was raped and murdered. Now, as a "Hungry Ghost," she finds the perfect host from whom to feed, returning with Alice to her home on the Peak. Together, entanged in the Saffords' web of dark secrets and desperate lies, they unleash chaos. Against a background of political unrest and familial breakdown, Alice's ghostly entourage swells alarmingly. Craving peace, she flees to England, then France, only to find her mischievous "Hungry Ghosts" have accompanied her.

Born on the night of a bad-luck comet, Ursula Flight has a difficult destiny written in the stars. Growing up with her family in the country,she is educated by a forward-thinking father who enables her to discover a love of reading, writing and astrology. Ursula dreams of becoming a famous playwright, but is devastated to learn she must instead fulfil her family's expectations and marry. Trapped and lost, Ursula plots her escape - but her freedom will come at a price. AsUrsula's dangerous desires play out, both on and off the stage, she's flung into a giddy world of actors, aristocrats and artistic endeavours which will change her life irrevocably. A gutsy coming-of-age story about a spirited young woman struggling to lead a creative life, this uplifting tale vividly evokes the glittering world of Restoration-era theatre. For anyone who has ever tried to succeed against the odds, The Illumination of Ursula Flight is an inspiring journey of love and loss, heartbreak and all-consuming passion.