Margaret Drabble

Fran may be old but she's not going without a fight. So she dyes her hair, enjoys a glass of red wine, drives restlessly around the country and lives in an insalubrious tower block that her loved ones disapprove of. And as each of them seeks happiness in their own way, will they be waving or drowning when the end comes?

In this collection of stories spanning nearly four decades, love affairs, conflicts and chance encounters are played out in locations that range from Somerset and Dorset to Elba and Turkmenistan. The protagonists are men, women, husbands and lovers, TV presenters and housewives all subtly captured with wit and acuity.

One day Liz Headleand receives a mysterious parcel, with Cambodian stamps, that contains a finger bone and scraps of writing by her friend, the novelist Stephen Cox. Enlisting the help of Hattie Osborne, another of his friends, Liz attempts to decipher his trail.

Continuing the story of three Cambridge friends and how they come to terms with l980s Britain. Sequel to: 'The Radiant Way' (2342)

In 1912 gifted Bessie Bawtry uses her place at Cambridge as a way to escape Breaseborough, a Yorkshire mining town. Her granddaughter visits the town nearly a century later and questions whether she has travelled further in life than her Yorkshire kin!

This is the story of Anna, a little girl with a luminescent quality, her mother, Jess, and the community that envelops them. A happy child, Anna is the unchanging core of this journey spanning decades and continents through the lives of those that love her.

In the eighteenth century a young girl was plucked from obscurity to marry the Crown Prince of Korea. Two hundred years later the Red Queen's ghost decides that she wants her story kept alive and selects Dr. Babs Halliwell as the perfect envoy.

Louise and Sarah have never been the closest of sisters. Louise, beautiful and sophisticated, has always kept a distance between them. But as Louise's marriage to novelist Stephen Halifax turns sour Sara becomes her confidante and friend and discovers that, beneath the cool exterior, her sister is not quite the person she thought she was.