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Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were truly stranger, more poignant and more terrifying than could ever be recounted in fiction. Attached to an order of nuns who had been working in the slums since the 1870s, Jennifer tells the story not only of the women she treated, but also of the community of nuns (including one wh

This is a gloriously witty novel from Sebastian Faulks using P.G. Wodehouse's much-loved characters, Jeeves and Wooster, fully authorised by the Wodehouse estate. Bertie Wooster, recently returned from a very pleasurable soujourn in Cannes, finds himself at the stately home of Sir Henry Hackwood in Dorset. Bertie is more than familiar with the country house set-up: he is a veteran of the cocktail hour and, thanks to Jeeves, his gentleman's personal gentleman, is never less than immaculately dressed. On this occasion, however, it is Jeeves who is to be seen in the drawing room while Bertie finds himself below stairs - and he doesn't care for it at all. Love, as so often, is at the root of the confusion. Bertie, you see, has met Georgiana on the Cote d'Azur. And though she is clever and

Man Booker Prize winner 2013

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. It is full of narrative, linguistic and psychological pleasures, and has a fiendishly clever and original structuring device. Written in pitch-perfect historic

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules is an incredibly quirky, humorous and warm-hearted story about growing old disgracefully - and breaking all the rules along the way! 79-year-old Martha Andersson dreams of escaping her care home and robbing a bank.She has no intention of spending the rest of her days in an armchair and is determined to fund her way to a much more exciting lifestyle. Along with her four oldest friends - otherwise known as the League of Pensioners - Martha decides to rebel against all of the rules imposed upon them. Together, they cause uproar with their antics protesting against early bedtimes and plasticky meals.As the elderly friends become more daring, they hatch a cunning plan to break out of the dreary care home and land themselves in a far more attractiv

THE INVENTION OF WINGS by Sue Monk Kidd was selected as an Oprah Book Club 2.0 pick on December 10, 2013. From the celebrated author of the international bestseller The Secret Life of Bees comes an extraordinary novel about two exceptional women. Sarah Grimke is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimke is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins ...A powerful, sweeping novel, inspired by real events, and set in the American Deep South in the nineteenth century, THE INVENTI

Weird, wicked, spooky and delicious, Pretty Monsters is a book of tall tales to keep you up all night. Kelly Link creates a world like no other, where ghosts of girlfriends past rub up against Scrabble-loving grandmothers with terrifying magic handbags, wizards sit alongside morbid babsitters, and we encounter a people-eating monster with a sick sense of humour. This edition also features a Brand New story, 'The Cinderella Game'.

This is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The matchless Munro makes art out of everyday lives in this exquisite collection. Here are men and women of wildly different times and circumstances, their lives made vividly palpable by the nuance and empathy of Munro's writing. Runaway is about the power and betrayals of love, about lost children, lost chances. There is pain and desolation beneath the surface, like a needle in the heart, which makes these stories more powerful and compelling than anything she has written before. It is the winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2009.

This novel, told from the viewpoints of four Chinese mothers and their four American-Chinese daughters, examines the nature of the mother-daughter relationship, and the problems of cultural identity the characters face.

The third volume of memoirs from the author who inspired the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small Training as an RAF pilot in the smoke and bustle of London is a far cry from James Herriot's day job as a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales. And while he is keen to serve Queen and country, James cannot help but miss his life in Darrowby -- despite frequent arguments between his colleagues, ornery cattle and equally ornery farmers, and the continuing saga of Cedric the flatulent dog. But most of all he misses his wife Helen; pregnant with their first child. The question is constantly hanging over him -- will he be going to war? And when will he get to go home? Since they were first published, James Herriot's memoirs have sold millions of copies and entranced generations of animal love

There on her forearm, next to a small brown birthmark, were six tattooed numbers. 'Do you remember me now?' he asked, trembling. She looked at him again, as if giving weight and bone to a ghost. 'Lenka, it's me,' he said. 'Josef. Your husband.' During the last moments of calm in prewar Prague, Lenka, a young art student, falls in love with Josef. They marry - but soon, like so many others, they are torn apart by the currents of war. In America Josef becomes a successful obstetrician and raises a family, though he never forgets the wife he thinks died in the camps. But in the Nazi ghetto of Terez?n - and later in Auschwitz - Lenka has survived, relying on her skills as an artist and the memories of a husband she believes she will never see again. Now, decades later, an unexpected encoun

Detective Harry Hole arrives in a steaming hot Bangkok. But it's work not pleasure. The Norwegian ambassador has been found dead in a seedy motel room, and no witnesses have come forward. The ambassador had close ties to the Norwegian Prime Minister, and to avoid a scandal Harry is sent there to hush up the case. But he quickly discovers that there is much more going on behind the scenes and very few people willing to talk. When Harry lays hands on some CCTV footage that will help him unravel what happened that night, things only get more complicated. The man who gave him the tape goes missing, and Harry realises that failing to solve a murder case is by no means the only danger in Bangkok.

This striking one-volume edition marks the 75th anniversary of Lewis's classic SF trilogy featuring the adventures of Dr Ransom on Mars, Venus and Earth. It includes an exclusive Foreword compiled from letters by J.R.R. Tolkien, who inspired Lewis to write the first volume. The Space Trilogy is a remarkable work of fantasy, demonstrating the powerful imagination of C.S..Lewis. This new one-volume edition marks the 75th Anniversary of the first publication of Out of the Silent Planet with an exclusive Foreword by J.R.R. Tolkien, on whom the main character of Ransom was largely based.

OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET
Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder