Item category 2: City of Literature

When Sara Crewe, the daughter of a rich and loving father, arrives at her new school in London from India, she is nicknamed the Little Princess by her classmates. When her father dies she is reduced to a life of poverty, left only with her dreams.

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At 16, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family for the young woman she ...

Twenty tales of lust and loss. These stories feature clockwork hearts, lascivious queens, paper men, island circuses, and a flooded world; some are radical retellings of classic stories, some are modern-day fables, but all explore substitutions for love.

Chantelle has everything going against her. She's a good student who only wants to pass her exams and find a way out of the sink estate in Manchester where she grew up. But now her feckless mother has taken off for Spain with her latest boyfriend and she's single-handedly raising her tearaway nin...

When Olivia Brookes calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. She has reason to fear the worst; this isn't the first tragedy that Olivia has experienced. Now, two years late, Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas is called in...

'Vurt' is an extraordinary and compulsive dark tale of England a few years from now. Scribble and his fellow stash riders are hooked on Vurt Feathers - the most powerful drug yet created. But it has its dangers.

When 15-year-old Skye's mother finally does something so shocking that it can't be hushed up, the police turn her over to the social workers - and that's when the nightmare begins. No one will let her talk to her father, and the woman who is supposed to be helping her dumps her in a terrifying 'h...

'There's no ceremony for friendship, is there? If you go ahead with this wedding then you realise that what you're actually saying is that your friendship with me is not meaningful and durable. That,' she sipped her wine victoriously, 'is the logical conclusion.' 'Believe me, if I could marry you...

'The Book of Tokyo' collects ten stories by some of Japan's most exciting contemporary short story writers. Together, the stories form a kind of 'literary map' of this ever-changing city's districts, through its fiction. With literary fiction, crime, sci-fi and horror, the book provides an imagin...

The sequel to 'Martha's Girls', this novel is a moving wartime saga that takes the reader to the very heart of a close-knit, fiery, loving family - perfect for fans of Maureen Lee, Mary Larkin, and Pam Weaver.