LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN`S PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE From the moment Alma Whittaker steps into the world, everything about life intrigues her. Instilled with an unquenchable sense of wonder by her father, a botanical explorer & the richest man in the New World, Alma is raised in a house of luxury & curiosity. It is not long before she becomes a gifted botanist in her own right. But as she flourishes & her research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, the man she comes to love draws her in the opposite direction
- into the realm of the spiritual, the divine & the magical. The Signature of All Things soars across the globe of the nineteenth century, from London & Peru, to Philadelphia, Tahiti & beyond. Peopled with extraordinary characters along the way, most of all it has an unforgettable heroine in Alma Whittaker.
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Fathi, a writer no longer permitted to write, makes his way through a city churned by parades for an unnamed dictator. It is a day stifled by heat & the noise of the chants, a day of people trampled, & of the brutality & bullying of the party faithful. But Fathi presses treacherously against the crowd, attempting just to visit his mother & his girlfriend. The Silence & the Roar is a personal, urgent, funny & aggrieved novel. It asks what it means to have a conscience, or to laugh, or to endure in a time of the violence, strangeness & roar of tyranny. It is both a true literary achievement & an act of real courage by a brilliant Syrian writer. ...

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration & one of our greatest contemporary writers on war comes a reimagining of the most famous conflict in literature
- the legendary Trojan War. When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis`s old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. & she`s not alone. On the same day, & on many others in the course of a long & bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes & flung to the fighters. The Trojan War is known as a man`s story: a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home & spirited across the sea. But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead? In this magnificent historical novel, Pat Barker charts one woman`s journey through the chaos of the most famous war in history, as she struggles to free herself & to become the author of her own story. Praise for Pat Barker:` Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation` Sunday Telegraph` She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature` Independent` Barker is a writer of crispness & clarity & an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human` Herald` You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline & a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world` Guardian
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The most chilling novel yet from Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an international bestseller at the height of her powers. ` Mummy dead.` The child`s pure treble was uncomfortably clear. It was the last thing Brynjar
- & doubtless the others
- wanted to hear at that moment. ` Daddy dead.` It got worse. ` Adda dead. Bygga dead.` The child sighed & clutched her grandmother`s leg. ` All dead.` A luxury yacht arrives in Reykjavik harbour with nobody on board. What has happened to the crew, & to the family who were on board when it left Lisbon? Thora Gudmundsdottir is hired by the young father`s parents to investigate, & is soon drawn deeper into the mystery. What should she make of the rumours saying that the vessel was cursed, especially given that when she boards the yacht she thinks she sees one of the missing twins? Where is Karitas, the glamorous young wife of the yacht`s former owner? & whose is the body that has washed up further along the shore?

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A woman on the run from her past. A child on the run from reality. A man on the run from himself. Carofiglio confronts the dark side of the human soul in this captivating story of fall & redemption. Every week, Roberto Marias crosses Rome on foot to arrive at his psychiatrist`s office. There, he often sits in silence, stumped by the ritual
- but sometimes crucial memories come to the surface. He remembers when he was a child & used to surf with his father. He remembers the treacherous years he spent working as an under-cover carabinieri, years that taught him how cynicism & corruption are not merely external influences, but also exist within us. He has lived an intoxicating & crushing life, but now his psychiatrist`s words, the hypnotic strolls through Rome, & a meeting with a woman named Emma
- who like Roberto is ravaged by a profound guilt
- are beginning to revive him. & when eleven-year-old Giacomo asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth.


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The powerful second psychological thriller featuring Javier Falcon, the complex detective from ` The Blind Man of Seville`. At seven years old, Mario Vega faces a terrible tragedy
- his parents are dead in an apparent suicide pact. But Inspector Javier Falcon has his doubts. In the brutal heat of a Seville summer, he dissects the disturbing life of the boy`s father, Rafael Vega. His investigation draws threats from the Russian mafia whose corruption reaches deep into the city. He questions a creative American couple with a destructive past & uncovers the misery of a famous actor whose only son is in prison for an appalling crime. More suicides follow & one of them is a senior policeman. As a forest fire rages through the hills above the city Falcon must sweat out the truth that connects it all
- & find the final secret in the dark heart of Vega`s life.

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From the No. 1 bestselling author of THE AMERICAN BOY comes a brilliant new historical thriller set during the French Revolution. Selected as Historical Novel of the Year by The Times & Sunday Times, & picked as one of Radio 4`s Crime Books of the Year. Paris, 1792. Terror reigns as the city writhes in the grip of revolution. The streets run with blood as thousands lose their heads to the guillotine. Edward Savill, working in London as agent for a wealthy American, receives word that his estranged wife Augusta has been killed in France. She leaves behind ten-year-old Charles, who is brought to England to Charnwood Court, a house in the country leased by a group of emigre refugees. Savill is sent to retrieve the boy, though it proves easier to reach Charnwood than to leave. & only when Savill arrives there does he discover that Charles is mute. The boy has witnessed horrors beyond his years, but what terrible secret haunts him so deeply that he is unable to utter a word? ...

Inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson & Susan Hill & set in a crumbling country mansion, The Silent Companions is an unsettling gothic ghost story to send a shiver down the spine... Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband`s crumbling country estate, The Bridge. With her new servants resentful & the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband`s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, & beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary & a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure
- a Silent Companion
- that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...

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As featured on the Radio 2 Book Club. Some doors are locked for a reason... Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband`s crumbling country estate, The Bridge. With her new servants resentful & the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband`s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, & beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary & a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure
- a Silent Companion
- that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...

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In Oe`s masterpiece of the human condition & family psychology, estranged brothers Mitsusaburo & Takashi have long since left their family home in a remote forested valley on Shikoku, in the south of Japan: Mitsusaburo for work in Tokyo; his younger brother Takashi for the United States, to atone for his part in anti-American student protests. Takashi`s return to Japan coincides with a local Korean supermarket magnate`s offer to buy the brothers` ancestral storehouse, pitting the brothers against one another & dredging up family histories best forgotten. The Silent Cry is the most important Japanese novel of the post-war period & a strange, unsettling tale of how the call of blood & history echoes down the generations. ...