Collection: Adult Fiction

Susan, a nurse, returns to the UK with a young Spanish woman who lost everything in the struggle against Franco's fascists. When World War Two begins, the Spaniard is interned & Susan has to rely upon a sinister Civil War veteran to get her released.

It's a summer's day in 1953 that turns Hilary Napier's life upside-down. When Marianne, a beautiful French woman, knocks on her door, Hilary can't help but be struck by Robert, the young boy with her. He has the same eyes as the brother she lost in the war.

It was only a mistletoe kiss, Miss Preece told herself, stepping out into the icy December evening and locking the library doors behind her. A mistletoe kiss means nothing, everyone knows that; but this did not quench the warm glow inside her.

'The Red Queen' tells the story of the child-bride of Edmund Tudor who, although widowed in her early teens, uses her determination of character and wily plotting to infiltrate the house of York to ultimately ensure that her only son, Henry Tudor, triumphs as King of England.

'Suite Francaise' is a lost masterpiece written in World War II France, telling the spellbinding story of a group of characters living under Nazi occupation.

In Love, Etc. Julian Barnes revisits Stuart, Gillian and Oliver, using the same intimate technique of allowing the characters to speak directly to the reader, to whisper their secrets and to argue for their version of the truth.

Continuing the saga begun in 'Chocolate Girls', and set in 1960s Birmingham, this is a story of families whose lives are entwined, of belonging and loss - and of a young woman's search for transforming love.

New mum Emily wants revenge on the stick-thin assistants who laugh at her post-baby tummy and post-baby budget. But frumpiness has its advantages when you're wielding a secret camera - and sending the damning footage straight to head office.

Lovejoy has been wrongfully imprisoned, again. So when he's offered a way out by visitor Ellen Jaynor, he takes it, although it becomes clear that there's a big catch involving speed-dating, marriage and the perfect robbery.

Tense and heartbreaking to its last page, 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' shows how life under seige creates impossible moral choices. When the everyday act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude - and frailty.