Like the new novel by the other twice-Booker-winner on this list, this is the third in a trilogy... following Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, both of which are also reissued in hardback a... read more
A sensitive novel about Elizabeth MacArthur, who managed to flourish at the end of the world (Australia in the 1790s) despite being married to an exceptionally obnoxious man.
A novel based on letters from the 1930s between the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and a student, revealing a gay relationship that remained secret from everyone including VH's wife (Toscanini's ... read more
Brighton, 1968: a film producer, a novelist and an actress find their private lives encroaching into their public worlds. Pressures build on the trio...
Every Christmas needs an escapist book and this year we think this fits the bill - a novel about the three daughters of the first Earl of Iveagh. There is of course the old chestnut that Pr... read more
The indefatigable author of 'Schindler's Ark' picks up here on the story of Dickens's youngest son, who emigrated to Australia to become a sheep farmer.
Who in the UK now remembers Ransmayr's 'The Last World', about Ovid in exile, which was such a bestseller in 1990? He remains a major European literary figure, and his new novel about Aliste... read more
Connecting with her sequence 'Gilead', 'Home' and 'Lila', this new novel concerns the family's errant son Jack, the intelligent, drunk, courteous, poetry-loving, foolish ne'er-do-well. Aspir... read more
The story of the protagonist is told from several points of view by different generations. Against the backdrop of Germany's imperial ambitions in Africa and Arctic explorations, through the... read more
From Bath in 1865 to Dublin and Borneo: a novel about transgressive relationships and a woman's sense of her own destiny being other than what convention dictates.
The discovery in 1799 of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance. Atmospheric historical fiction with a delightful heroine.
Set in 1742, this is a rollicking reworking of Moonfleet in which a wild, cross-dressing teenage girl joins a bloodthirsty gang of smugglers to avenge her father's murder.
Against the backdrop of WW2 and its aftermath, a young Italian woman marries and moves to her husband's village in the south. Ginzburg's characteristically limpid prose harbours may details ... read more
A rollocking historical novel set in Renaissance Venice: an artist sets his heart on a miraculous new pigment, only to find himself caught up in conspiracies, a love affair, violence, obsess... read more
A Crimean War hero's divorce & remarriage causes two lines of descendants, who meet up again one summer in Devon in the 1970s. Ructions ensue. Shrewdly observed and compelling.
Set in Paris, India and Calcutta, this delightful picaresque adventure owes something to both Kim and Kidnapped. Written in bracing C18th language by a genius.
The Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins descends on seventeen-century Essex, where he finds himself oddly fascinated by a 'peculiar' young woman. A historical novel with real bite, which rec... read more
The Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins descends on seventeen-century Essex, where he finds himself oddly fascinated by a 'peculiar' young woman. A historical novel with real bite, which rec... read more
The Indemnity and Oblivion Act passed into law in 1660, the first year of the Restoration. In Harris's compelling new novel, two regicides flee to America but are tried and found guilty in ... read more
Reymont was a Polish novelist who won the Nobel prize in 1924; this is his magnum opus, an epic of nearly 1000 pages set in the C19th, about a small Polish village. At its centre are a weal... read more
The life of the black Georgian composer and abolitionist (1729-1780), thrillingly imagined. Born on a slave ship, his owner gave him, as a two-year-old, to three sisters living in Greenwich.... read more
When a young woman in Renaissance Italy is taken by her husband, the Duke of Ferrara, to a remote villa, she realises he intends to kill her... Richly told, by the author of Hamnet.