Roman

Quentin Compson and Shreve, his Harvard room-mate, are obsessed by the tragic rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. As a poor white boy, Sutpen was turned away from a plantation owner's mansion by a negro butler. From then on, he was determined to force his way into the upper echelons of Southern society. His relentless will ensures his ambitions are soon realised; land, marriage, children. But in after the chaos of Civil War, secrets from his own past threaten to destroy everything he has worked for.

He thinks, as he escapes from Zanzibar, that he will probably never return, and yet the dream of studying in England matters above that.

Things do not happen quite as he imagined - the school where he teaches is cramped and violent, he forgets how it feels to belong. But there is Emma, beautiful, rebellious Emma, who turns away from her white, middle-class roots to offer him love and bear him a child. And in return he spins stories of his home and keeps her a secret from his family.

Twenty years later, when the barriers at last come down in Zanzibar, he is able and compelled to go back. What he discovers there, in a story potent with truth, will change the entire vision of his life.

Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (1898-1936) was a ship's doctor serving in south-east Asia, and is one of the most important twentieth-century Dutch-language writers. His 1934 novel Adrift in the Middle Kingdom (Het leven op aarde), is an epic sweep of narrative that takes the reader from 1920s Shanghai to a forgotten city beyond the Great Wall of China. Slauerhoff's narrator is a Belfast ship's radio operator, desperate to escape the sea, who travels inland on a gun-runner's mission. He moves through extraordinary settings of opium salons, the house of a Cantonese watch-mender, the siege of Shanghai, the great flood on the western plains, and the discovery of oil by the uncomprehending overlord in the hidden city of Chungking. The fantasy ending transforms the novel from travelogue and adventure to existential meditation. But running like a thread of darkness through the story is opium, from poppy head harvesting to death through addiction. This translation by David McKay, winner of the 2018 Vondel Prize, is the first English edition of Slauerhoff's most accessible and enthralling novel. The Introduction is by Slauerhoff expert Arie Pos and Wendy Gan of the University of Hong Kong.

While he was still a little boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the German colonial troops. After years away, fighting in a war against his own people, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away.

Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security - and the love of the beautiful Afiya.

As fate knots these young people together, as they live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war on another continent lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away.

'Beautifully written. Clever, lively, funny, compelling' NINA STIBBE'Funny, heartbreaking, achingly real. Gorgeous. I absolutely loved it' JANE FALLON'Beautifully written, funny, heart-breaking and always wise. A proper treat' DAILY MAIL'An entertaining, growingly poignant contemporary tale' SUNDAY TIMES'No other author marries heartbreak and hilarity so seamlessly' MAIL ON SUNDAY'Marian's mastery of story and character is as impressive as ever' HEAT 'BOOK OF THE YEAR'______Losing the love of your life once is tragic. TWICE looks like carelessness . . . Rachel Walsh is a survivor: she survived rehab and the loss of her greatest love. These days everything in her life is good - good job, good dog, very good boyfriend. Then Luke - her ex of six years - shows up. Suddenly she's fragile and falling. They ended badly and neither can speak of the secret hurt which drove them apart. But is it fear of what happened? Or what might happen next?______**THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS AUTHOR OF THE YEAR 2022**Why readers LOVE Again, Rachel!'This is Marian's most moving, emotive and brilliantly written book yet. Just wonderful' 5* Reader Review'Again, Rachel has all the ingredients that make Marian's books so uniquely special - warmth, humour, sadness and depth. It's absolutely perfect' 5* Reader Review'Marian Keyes is just the most talented writer. I adore her, and this book is a pinnacle. It left me sobbing with its beauty, and minutes later laughing out loud at the wit and wry humour of the deeply flawed and deeply human characters' 5* Reader Review'I devoured this book and lost myself in the characters that Marian makes so accessible, easy to identify with and so perfectly flawed' 5* Reader Review 'I laughed, I cried, I obsessed and now I'm going to have to read it again because I can't bear to leave the characters behind. Wonderful!' 5* Reader Review

It was with Alexis that, in 1928, Marguerite Yourcenar began her career as a novelist. The book remains one of the stellar literary debuts of the century. Yourcenar has created a moving meditation on the relationship between pleasure and love.

By the author of The Handmaid's TaleNow a major NETFLIX seriesSometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery. 'Brilliant... Atwood's prose is searching. So intimate it seems to be written on the skin' Hilary Mantel'The outstanding novelist of our age' Sunday Times'A sensuous, perplexing book, at once sinister and dignified, grubby and gorgeous, panoramic yet specific...I don't think I have ever been so thrilled' Julie Myerson, Independent on Sunday

Easily the most purely entertaining novel I have read so far this year" David Mills, The Sunday Times"A really excellent suspense novelist" Stephen KingThe second volume of Pierre Lemaitre's enthralling, award-winning between-the-wars trilogyIn 1927, the great and the good of Paris gather at the funeral of the wealthy banker, Marcel Pericourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take over his financial empire (although, unfortunately, she knows next to nothing about banking). More unfortunately still, when Madeleine's seven-year-old son, Paul, tumbles from a second floor window of the Pericourt mansion on the day of his grandfather's funeral, and suffers life-changing injuries, his fall sets off a chain of events that will reduce Madeleine to destitution and ruin in a matter of months. Using all her reserves of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a burning desire for retribution, Madeleine sets about rebuilding her life. She will be helped by an ex-Communist fixer, a Polish nurse who doesn't speak a word of French, a brainless petty criminal with a talent for sabotage, an exiled German Jewish chemist, a very expensive forger, an opera singer with a handy flair for theatrics, and her own son with ideas for a creative new business to take Paris by storm. A brilliant, imaginative, free-falling caper through between-the-wars Paris, and a portrait of Europe on the edge of disaster. Translated from the French by Frank WynneWith the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European UnionFrom the reviews for The Great Swindle"The most purely enjoyable book I've read this year" Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph"The vast sweep of the novel and its array of extraordinary secondary characters have attracted comparisons with the works of Balzac. Moving, angry, intelligent - and compulsive" Marcel Berlins, The Times