Item category 1: Adult Paperback

'The Bluest Eye' chronicles the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in 1940s Ohio. Pecola, unlovely and unloved, prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows.

In a sheltered basin, high up in Colorado's remote Rocky Mountains, two field collectors discover an awesome array of dinosaur bones. Knowing that two competing and irreconcilably hostile palaeontologists will pay big money for knowledge of such a find, the men realise that they have struck bone ...

Jemma has lived a thousand lives through books. The only life she isn't living is her own. That is, until the day she finds a note from a stranger in her favourite library book. When she replies, the pair begin a longhand conversation about their love of novels that sees Jemma finally coming out ...

Rome, 1659. Months after the plague has ravaged Rome, men are still dying in unnatural numbers, and rumour has it that their corpses do not decay as they should. The Papal authorities commission prosecutor Stefano Bracchi to investigate, telling him he will need considerable mettle to reach the t...

Bustling with rich detail, historical vignettes and surprising wares, this is the story of Britain's best-loved but ever-changing public spaces. What makes a high street? It's certainly not just about the shopping; these thoroughfares are often the beating heart of our towns and cities and, by ex...

In thirteenth-century Ireland, a woman with power is a woman to be feared. When a young Alice Kyteler sees her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities, she vows that she won't suffer the same fate. Soon Alice discovers she has a flair for making money, and builds a flourish...

London, 1839. Where the cemeteries are full and there is money to be made in death, Bonnie and Crawford lead a life of trickery, surviving off ill-gotten coin and nefarious schemes. But one hot evening, their luck runs out. A man lies in a pool of blood at Bonnie's feet and now she needs to disap...

Just after undertaker Sam Foster has received a letter telling him to have three fresh graves dug, a mysterious man in black arrives in War Smoke with revenge in his heart. Jonas Ward has travelled all the way from the Eastern Seaboard to fulfil the dying wishes of his late brother Lucas - to kil...

From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a nineteenth-century women's asylum, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Dr Silas Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum...

In 1581, Emilia Bassano is allowed no voice of her own. But as the Lord Chamberlain's mistress she has access to the theatre, and finds a way to bring her work to the stage secretly. And yet, creating some of the world's greatest dramatic masterpieces comes at a great cost: by paying a man for th...