Pamela Todd

Pearlman writes about the predicaments odd, wry, funny and painful of being human. Her view of the world is large and compassionate, delivered through small, beautifully precise moments. Her characters inhabit terrain that all of us recognize, one defined by anxieties and longing, love and grief, loss and exultation.

In this captivating memoir Vesna Goldsworthy tells the story of herself, her family and her early life in her lost country. There follows marriage, a move to England and a successful media and academic career, then a cancer diagnosis and its unresolved consequences.

Tobi and Ella's childhood in East Berlin is shrouded in mystery. Now adults living in London, their past is full of unanswered questions. Both remember their family's daring and terrifying attempt to escape, which ended in tragedy; but the fall-out from that single event remains elusive. Where did their parents disappear to, and why? What happened to Heiko, their little brother? And was there ever a painting of three blue horses?

A collection of dark stories charting tantrums, funerals, pregnancy, war and love affairs. One woman finds grief for her lost lover is assuaged by involvement in some carpentry repair work, while another grows increasingly angry as the grim reaper scythes through her circle, with farcical and tragic results; amongst other tales which unroll with piercing wit and sympathy.

In 1919 Sian Busby's great-grandmother gave birth to triplets. One of the babies died at birth, and eleven days later she drowned the surviving twins in a bath. It wasn't until Busby began to experience postpartum depression herself that she felt compelled to learn more about this shadowy story that had quietly shaped her family's collective history.

Sally's son Dan has come back home from college after completing his performing arts degree. He needs rent-free accommodation, friends, a love life, and somewhere to perform his arts. Sally herself is taking a career break from teaching English. She's tired of teaching year eleven pupils about the Mockingbird. She wants to kill the bird and stuff it with all the redundant apostrophe's' she's ever seen in twenty years of marking essays. She needs a rest. She does not need her adult son Dan, his current girlfriend, his previous girlfriend and his old school friend to move in and share her kitchen and their lives with her. Sally could seek out her own friends to let off steam, but her friends prefer her to keep her steam to herself. They're busy, and too much steam makes it difficult for them to see their own problems clearly. Sally's husband Bill is an ambitious politician. A tranquil, unexceptional home-life would work well for Bill and his career. In his line of work he needs unconventional domestic arrangements like he needs ladies underwear in his briefcase. However, when Bill looks to his wife for her proper support, Sally does something outrageous ...

Two women, a writer and artist, work side-by-side in their Helsinki studios. They have loved and argued for decades, as they travel together and share summers on a remote island. Yet no matter how many times they've played the game, it is always capable of surprising them.

Three festive tales from the brilliant pen of Kate Atkinson, which offer a good introduction to the author's work and her quirky sense of humour.

Kathleen Jamie, award winning poet, has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In these poems she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings.

Neve is a writer in her mid-30s married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other relationships. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love?

Madrid, 1957. Daniel is young, wealthy and unsure of his place in the world, he views the city through the lens of his camera. Ana, is a hotel maid whose family is suffering under the fascist dictatorship of General Franco. Lives and hearts collide as they unite to uncover the hidden darkness within the city. A darkness that could engulf them all . . .

Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient and eager to please, she accepts this closed world. Her only deviation from total obedience is the passionate friendships she makes.

In these stories, whole lives come into focus through single events or sudden memories which bring the past bubbling to the surface. The past, as the characters discover, is made up not only of what is remembered, but also what isn't.

Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband is in love with another woman. Food is her consolation, and since Rachel is a cookery writer, and between trying to win Mark back and wishing him dead, she offers us some of her favourite recipes. 'Heartburn' is a roller coaster of love, betrayal, loss and - most satisfyingly - revenge.

In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her family home in Athens after 60 years in exile, to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, whom she has not seen since she left him as a baby. His English widow, Maud, is curious about his complicated past. She discovers a heartbreaking story of a young mother caught up in the political tides of the Greek Civil War, and forced to make a terrible decision that would blight not only her life but that of future generations...

Mary Shelley was brought up in a house filled with radical thinkers, poets, philosophers and writers of the day. Aged sixteen, she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley and it was while she was still a teenager that she composed her canonical novel, Frankenstein. Fiona Sampson sifts through letters, diaries and records to find the real woman behind the story.

As one of the best biographers of her generation, Claire Tomalin has written about great novelists and poets to huge success. Now, she turns to look at her own life, vividly and frankly portraying the social pressures on a woman in the fifties and sixties.

Futh, a middle-aged and newly separated man, is on his way to Germany for a restorative walking holiday. As he sets out along the Rhine, he contemplates an earlier trip to Germany and the things he has done in his life, but he does not foresee the potentially devastating consequences of things he has not done.

A dramatic and moving story set in the same world as the international bestseller The Island from the celebrated novelist Victoria Hislop. The absorbing story of the Cretan village of Plaka and the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga – Greece's former leper colony – is told to us by Maria Petrakis, one of the children in the original version of The Island. She tells us of the ancient and misunderstood disease of leprosy, exploring the themes of stigma, shame and the treatment of those who are different, which are as relevant for children as adults.

In the autumn of 1686, Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of merchant trader Johannes Brandt. Nella is at first mystified by the closed world of the Brandt household, but as she uncovers its secrets she realizes the escalating dangers that await them all. Richard & Judy Bookclub

The London winter of 1947 - as cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. The Karenins keep their vodka under the snow in their suburban garden, in bottles entombed like their Russian past. But when a young Frenchwoman arrives to work as a companion to the aged 'Monsieur Ka' he begins to tell her his story...

A stunning collection of new and classic poems from around the world celebrating the diversity of life on our green and blue planet, to be shared with all the family.

With new poems from Raymond Antrobus, Mona Arshi, Kate Tempest, Hollie McNish, Dean Atta, Sabrina Mahfouz and more.

A stunning collection of new and classic poems from around the world celebrating the diversity of life on our green and blue planet, to be shared with all the family.

With new poems from Raymond Antrobus, Mona Arshi, Kate Tempest, Hollie McNish, Dean Atta, Sabrina Mahfouz and more.

Naples, 1633. Giulia Tofana longs for more responsibility in her mother’s apothecary business, but Mamma has always been secretive and refuses to tell her the hidden keys to her success. But the day Mamma is arrested for the poisoning of the powerful Duke de Verdi, Giulia is shocked to uncover the darker side of her trade. Giulia must run for her life, and escapes to Naples to the home of her Aunt Isabetta, a famous courtesan. But when Giulia hears that her mother has been executed she swears she will wreak revenge on the Duke de Verdi.

After opening her boutique Bazaar on London’s King’s Road in 1955, Quant soared to international fame with her brand of witty style that fitted perfectly with modern city life. She was at the forefront of fashion’s democratization, seeking to eliminate snobbery and “make fashionable clothes available to everyone.” Her autobiography captures the world in which she found inspiration, and which she ultimately helped to define and change.

Friends since university, with busy working lives behind them, Dido and Georgia have long been looking forward to carefree days of books and conversation, when each finds herself caught up in unexpected domestic drama. Meanwhile, an eccentric country cousin goes wildly off the rails, children are unhappy in love, and perfect health is all at once in question.

Britain is awash, the sea creeps into the land, brambles and forest swamp derelict towns. Food production has moved overseas and people are forced to move to the cities for work. The countryside is empty. A chorus, the herd voice of feral cows, wander this newly wild land watching over changing times, speaking with love and exasperation.

Jesse and his puppy Mister Maliks roam the woods until his family are forced to leave for London. Lee runs from the terrible restrictions of the White Town where he grew up. Isolde leaves London on foot, walking the abandoned A12 in search of the truth about her mother.

A Mother and daughter tell their stories in tandem, starting in WW2 and ending with a Tsunami in Asia. Richard & Judy Bookclub

A collection of poems featuring works such as 'Bloody Men', 'Men and the Boring Arguments', and 'Two Cures for Love'. Light and humorous but with depth, these poems will resonate with both men and women making their way in the modern world.

Escaping her childhood home of Kentucky, the narrator arrives at a bohemian hotel in Manhattan filled with 'drunks, actors and gamblers'. Here begin the erotic affairs and dinner parties, the abortions and heartbreaks, the friendships and 'people I have buried'. Here are luminous sketches of characters she has met that illuminate the era's racism, sexism, and poverty.

A mouth-watering smorgasbord of stories with food in the starring role, by a rich variety of authors from Dickens, Chekhov and Saki to Isak Dinesen. The menu includes choice titbits from many famous novels such as Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' (9496), and Proust's rhapsodic memories of watching the family cook prepare asparagus in 'Remembrance of Things Past' (2942).

In this luminous essay collection, acclaimed author Kathleen Jamie visits archeological sites and mines her own memories – of her grandparents, of youthful travels – to explore what surfaces and what reconnects us to our past. As always she looks to the natural world for her markers and guides. Most movingly, she considers, as her father dies and her children leave home, the surfacing of an older, less tethered sense of herself.

The open door felt like an invitation, or a trap. Bastien wasn't sure which, but with no other choice, he stepped inside...and hoped he'd make it out again alive.

Bastien Bonlivre is a boy with a big imagination, determined to finish the story his parents started, left to him in a red notebook.

On the other side of Paris, bestselling author Olivier Odieux is struggling to complete his latest novel. Along with his villainous brothers, he is masterminding his greatest plot yet...one that will spread fear throughout the city and beyond.

What connects these two stories is a dangerous secret, a hidden mystery and an unexpected race across Paris for the truth. Can Bastien and his friends Alice, Theo and Sami be brave enough to stop Olivier stealing the ending they deserve?

A classic adventure story about friendship, hope, bravery and the power of imagination.

When Harriet Harman started her career, female MPs were a tiny minority. But, she argues, we should never just be grateful that things are better now. There's still more to do. Here, Harriet looks at her own life to see how far we've come, and where we should go next.

Britain's best-known classicist Mary Beard, is also a committed and vocal feminist. With wry wit, she revisits the gender agenda and shows how history has treated powerful women. Her examples range from the classical world to the modern day, from Medusa and Athena to Theresa May and Hillary Clinton.

An insight into women’s lives in the 20th century told through the clothes they wore. Tracing the story of women at home and in work, from the jet buttons of Victorian mourning, to the short skirts of the 1960s, taking in suffragettes, Biba and the hankering for vintage.