Salley Vickers

The stories in this collection deal with the psychological aspects of love - love given and withheld, love craved and lost, and love met and disappointed. Psychologically acute, sharply written in lucid and witty prose, these stories, set in Venice, Greece and Rome, take us into the complex geography of the human heart.

There is something special about the ancient cathedral in Chartres, and there is something special too about Agnès Morel, the mysterious woman who is to be found cleaning it each morning. The young woman brings healing to the town, only to find her own redemption among its community of lost souls.

When Will Tye suffers a life changing accident, the terrible event ripples through three generations of his complex family, bringing to light old tragedies and dangerous secrets. Most closely affected is Will's cousin Cecelia, whose own life will change forever, depending on how she responds to such unbelievable and shocking truths…

Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity.

Artist, Hassie Days, and her sister, Margot, buy a run down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left alone to work the large, long-neglected garden. She is befriended by eccentric, sharp-tongued, Miss Foot, who recommends, Murat, an Albanian migrant, made to feel out of place among the locals, to help Hassie in the garden.

As she works the garden in Murat's peaceful company, Hassie ruminates on her past life: the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood and the love affair that left her with painful, unanswered questions.

But as she begins to explore the history of the house and the mysterious nearby wood, old hurts begin to fade as she experiences the healing power of nature and discovers other worlds.

In her haunting new novel, Salley Vickers, the bestselling author of The Librarian and The Cleaner of Chartres, writes with the profound psychological insight and sense of the numinous power of place that is the hallmark of all her novels.

A wonderful story about four very different grandmothers - Blanche, who can't seem to stop stealing things from the local pharmacy; Minna, who just wants a quiet life in her shepherd's hut, though the local children have other ideas; Cherry, who's adjusting to life in a care home; and Nan, whose favourite occupation is researching funerals - whose lives and grandchildren become unexpectedly entangled.

When Peter Hansome dies in a car crash he leaves behind a wife, Bridget, and a mistress, Frances. The lovers' triangle which emerges is just one of many triangles which occured in Peter's life and relationships.

Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman in her twenties, moves to East Mole, a quaint market town in middle England, to start a new job as a children's librarian. But the apparently pleasant town is not all it seems. Sylvia falls in love with an older man - and her connection to his precocious young daughter and her neighbours' son will change her life and put them, the library and her job under threat.

Julia Garnet, a recently retired teacher, uses a legacy to rent an apartment in Venice over the winter. Her normal caution and reserve are overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and she comes to life.

At St Oswalds, a long established school, unwelcome change is about to happen. Beneath the usual school rivalries there are darker undercurrents as a bitter hidden but carefully nurtured grudge is about to erupt.

Mr Golightly, a rumpled elderly man, moves into a cottage in Great Calne. He is the author of a once famous work, now tending to be overlooked. He had meant to use his holiday to rewrite his opus as a soap opera, but he is gradually drawn into the problems of the village people.

Psychiatrist, David McBride, is unusually drawn to death having witnessed the death of his six-year-old brother as a child. He finds himself intrigued by a patient, a failed suicide, whose tale unfolds in this story on the theme of redemption through love and art.