12 Fiction


71225 TEACHER, TEACHER!


by Jack Sheffield


Miss Barrington-Huntley took off her steel-framed spectacles and polished them deliberately. ‘Mr Sheffield’, she said, ‘After careful consideration we have decided to offer you the very challenging post of Headmaster of Ragley School.’ It is 1977 and Jack Sheffield arrives at a small village primary school in North Yorkshire. Little does he


imagine what the first year will hold in store as he has to grapple with Ruby, the 20 stone caretaker with an acute spelling problem, Vera, the school secretary who worships Margaret Thatcher, Ping, the little Vietnamese refugee who becomes the school’s best reader and poet, and Deke Ramsbottom, a singing cowboy, father of Wayne, Shane and Clint, and many others including a groundsman who grows giant carrots, a barmaid parent who requests sex lessons and a five year old boy whose language is colourful in the extreme. Then there is the beautiful, bright Beth Henderson, a deputy head who is irresistibly attractive to the young headmaster. 333pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


71224 MISTER TEACHER by Jack Sheffield It is 1978, and Jack Sheffield is beginning his second year as the head master of a small village school in North Yorkshire. There are three letters on his desk - one makes him smile, one makes him sad and one is destined to change his life forever. This is from nine year old Sebastian, suffering from leukaemia in the local hospital who writes a heartbreaking letter addressed to ‘Mister Teacher’. So begins a journey through the seasons of Yorkshire life. Vera the school secretary worships Margaret Thatcher; Ruby, the 20- stone caretaker sings like Julie Andrews; Dorothy, the coffee shop assistant is desperate to be Wonder Woman. 363pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


71228 DEAR TEACHER by Jack Sheffield It is 1979. Dallas is enthralling the nation on TV, Mrs Thatcher has become Prime Minister, Abba is Top of the Pops, and in the small Yorkshire village of Ragley- on-the-Forest, Jack Sheffield returns to his third year as Headmaster of the village school. Ruby the caretaker discovers her Prince Charming; Vera the school secretary gets to meet her hero Nicholas Parsons, and Jack, to his astonishment, finds himself having to stand in as a curiously skinny Father Christmas. He is also


71697 A CAUTIOUS APPROACH by Stanley Middleton


The setting is Beechnall, the small Midlands town where the occasional small social ripple is the only clue to the passion and violence seething away beneath its respectable veneer. On a Christmas Day walk, two lonely men meet. Andy invites George home for a festive glass, where he meets the captivating Mirabel, Andy’s former fiancée. Ill health has deprived George of both his career and his confidence, but this chance encounter - and others that follow - could change the course of his life, if his past experiences and present stoicism will allow it. 220pp. £18.99 NOW £4


71748 THE JUDGE’S DAUGHTER and THE


READING ROOM by Ruth Hamilton A two-in-one omnibus in bargain priced 406 page plus 392 page chunky paperback. Agnes Makepeace has always been courageous and strong-minded on the surface, and could not be more unlike the chilly, reserved Helen Spencer. Judge Spencer has long neglected Helen his daughter, and notices her even less when he takes a new wife. But he has underestimated both his daughter’s misery and her determination to enact her revenge. In the second novel, The Reading Room, Leanne Chalmers has made a career for herself presenting her own style of home decorating and design on the nation’s screen. That was her past life for now she has been forced to start again as Lily, leaving her name, job and marriage behind and no one in the Lancashire village of Eagleton has a clue about her. She soon joins Dave’s reading room, a shop-cum café-cum library and begins to relax, but not for long. Her husband Clive who had left her for dead may now be out to kill her. £7.99 NOW £4


71994 LIGHTS OF LIVERPOOL by Ruth Hamilton


Three families connected by blood in Liverpool are separated by circumstance. The O’Neils, who have lost brothers and sons into the bowels of London’s East End, keep watch over their one remaining young male, a boy named Seamus. Meanwhile, Rosh Allen mourns the loss of Phil, her dearly-beloved husband. Aided and impeded by her mother Anna, she struggles to raise her three children. Tess and Don Compton are on the verge of separation. Tess wants a semi-detached house and all her own way. But what really lies behind her desire to live on the posh side of the street? Behind the three families, two men are at work. One will do horrific damage, the other will reunite a clan that descends from Ireland, and ancestors thrown ashore from the ships of the Spanish Armada. 440pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £4


71751 MARTHA’S JOURNEY by Maureen Lee Liverpool 1914. Martha Rossi lives in a tenement with her husband and five children. They don’t have much to get by on and life is tough, but when Martha’s underage son Joe enlists in order to earn the family a little extra, she is horrified. Ignoring his mother’s pleas and protests, Joe joins the army and is dispatched to France. It is an act of selfless heroism that will cast a long shadow over his family. As telegrams carrying heartbreaking news begin to arrive from the Front, Martha undertakes a journey of her own which will take her right to the door of No. 10 Downing Street. 344pp with author Q&A section, paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


having to choose between the vivacious sisters Beth and Laura Henderson. 363pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


71223 VILLAGE TEACHER by Jack Sheffield It is 1980 - recession and unemployment has hit Britain, a royal wedding is on the way, and the whole country is wondering Who Shot JR? As Jack returns to his fourth year at Ragley-on-the-Forest School, there is a definite chill in the air. Village schools are being closed down all over the place, and will his be one of them? As school life continues, Vera the new secretary, has to grapple with a new-fangled electric typewriter, Ruby celebrates ten years as the school cleaner, and the village panto throws up some unusual problems. From the bestselling Teacher series. 347pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


71227 PLEASE SIR! by Jack Sheffield It is 1981 and the time of Adam and the Ants, Rubik’s Cube, the Sony Walkman and the Falklands War. As head teacher, Jack Sheffield returns to Ragley-on-the- Forest School for another rollercoaster year. Vera, the ever-efficient school secretary, has to grapple with a new-fangled computer, and enjoys a royal occasion, while Ruby the caretaker rediscovers romance with a Butlin’s Redcoat. And for Jack, wedding bells are in the air, but the unexpected is just around the corner. The fifth instalment in the popular Teacher series. 336pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3


71226 EDUCATING JACK by Jack Sheffield


As September 1982 arrives, Jack Sheffield returns to Ragley Village School for his sixth year as head teacher. It’s the time of ET and Greenham Common, Prince Williams’s birth, Fame legwarmers and the puzzling introduction of the new 20 pence piece. Nora Pratt celebrates 25 years in her coffee shop, Ronnie Smith finally tries to get a job, and little Krystal Entwistle causes concern in the school’s


Nativity play. Meanwhile for Jack the biggest surprise of his life is in store. From the charming Teacher series. 336pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


71542 TEACHER SERIES: Set of Six by Jack Sheffield


Buy all six paperbacks and save even more. £47.94 NOW £15


71843 A ROSE FOR VIRTUE by Norah Lofts When her mother marries Napoleon Bonaparte, Hortense Beauharnais finds herself thrust into the turbulent atmosphere of the post-Revolutionary French court, a dangerous world ruled by jealousy and malice. With Bonaparte desperate for an heir and the Empress Josephine seemingly unable to bear children, Hortense is pressed to marry the Emperor’s brother Louis. Browbeaten and mistreated by her new husband, she struggles to maintain equilibrium and dreams of the day when she might be able to marry her true love. First published in 1971, 256pp in paperback reissue. £7.99 NOW £2.25


71866 NETHERGATE by Norah Lofts Forced to flee Revolutionary France after the brutal guillotining of her beloved father, Isabella de Savigny arrives at Nethergate, the Suffolk house of her cousin, hoping for sympathy and succour. Instead, as a poor relation, she is forced to live the life of a servant and suffer the casual cruelty of lady’s maid Martha Pratt. When she is seduced and abandoned by the son of the house, Isabella is forced to marry Martha’s brother, and her struggle to survive truly begins. Her misery is lessened when her daughter is born. 256 page paperback reissue. £7.99 NOW £3


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71935 NOAH’S COMPASS by Anne Tyler Liam Pennywell has spent most of his life dodging issues and skirting adventure when suddenly, in his 61st year, something happens that jolts him out of his certainty and leaves him with a frightening gap in his memory. In trying to piece together what took place on the first night in a new apartment, Liam finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems. With pitch- perfect observation, this is an elegant contemplation of what it means to be happy. 277pp in paperback. £5.99 NOW £3


71937 TRESPASS by Rose Tremain In a silent valley in southern France stands an isolated stone farmhouse the Mas Lunel. Its owner is Aramon Lunel, an alcoholic haunted by his violent past. His sister, Audrun, alone in her bungalow within sight of the house, dreams of exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life. Into this closed world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques dealer from London seeking to remake his life in France. From the moment he arrives at the Mas Lunel, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences is set in motion. 372pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50


71939 A CONCISE CHINESE-ENGLISH


DICTIONARY FOR LOVERS by Xiaolu Guo A moving story of love across cultural boundaries holds up a mirror to British society as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. Arriving in England at her mother’s insistence to improve her language skills, Zhuang thinks she is in a dream. She writes down her thoughts in halting English, punctuated by dictionary definitions of puzzling words and expressions whose complex meanings reflect the contradictions in British culture. Obviously the English are lazy, given the limitations of their 26- character alphabet compared with 50,000 in Chinese. It is at the cinema that she meets a man who becomes her lover in the tender and radiant love story which is at the centre of the book. 354pp. Paperback. £11.99 NOW £2.50


72058 OCTOBER HORSE by Colleen McCullough


Julius Caesar is in the prime of his life, but behind the myth lies a man beset with contradictions. Happily married, he is also the lover of Cleopatra, the enigmatic Egyptian queen. A great general, he seeks to end Rome’s endless wars. Conscious of his own power and contemptuous of lesser men, he is determined not to be crowned as emperor. But Caesar is a man whose greatness attracts envy and jealousy to a dangerous degree - as the political intrigues which surround him intensify, his destruction becomes inevitable. An engrossing historical novel, McCullough spins a stupendous tale of murderous ambition, guile, a fascination, tragedy, love and lust. 110 page paperback. £9.99 NOW £3.50


72249 HAWK QUEST: An Epic Novel of the Norman Conquest


by Robert Lyndon AD 1072. The Normans have captured England. The Turks have captured a Norman knight. In order to free him, a warrior named Vallon must capture four rare hawks. As they track their quarry to the far ends of the earth, from Greenland to Russia to Constantinople, Vallon and his comrades must brave raging Arctic seas, savage Vikings and blood-drenched battlefields in a relentless race against time. In the grand tradition of Bernard Cornwell, this epic adventure was ten years in the making. 750pp, paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


72113 CASEBOOK OF VICTOR


FRANKENSTEIN by Peter Ackroyd A creepy revival of Mary Shelley’s classic turned into a fast-paced thriller which nods towards the notion of split personality and ends in a fiery revelation. Victor Frankenstein begins his anatomy experiments in a barn in the secluded village of Headington near Oxford. The coroner’s office provides the corpses he needs, but they have often died by violent means and are damaged and putrefying. So he moved his coils and jars and electrical fluids to a deserted pottery manufactory in Limehouse. From Limehouse he makes contact with the Doomesday Men, the resurrectionists. 408pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


72118 IN A LAND OF PLENTY by Tim Pears In a small town in the middle of England, the aftermath of World War Two brings change. For ambitious industrialist Charles Freeman it offers new opportunities and marriage to Mary. In quick succession three sons and a daughter bring life to the big house, and with it the seeds of family joy and tragedy. Charles’ business expands in direct proportion to his girth and becomes a symbol of the town’s fortunes as Britain claws its way back from wartime austerity. Times change and so do the family’s fortunes. Their stories create a generous epic, a plangent hymn to the transformation of middle England over the past 50 years. Brave, warm and wise, nostalgic in tone. 673pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


72133 DAYS OF GRACE by Catherine Hall


“Sarah Waters meets Daphne du Maurer” in a beautifully written novel about the pains of unrequited love. When World War Two breaks out, Nora is evacuated to the safety of rural Kent and quickly comes to love her new life with the Rivers family, in particular with their daughter Grace. But as the Spitfires rage ever more fiercely over head, the brittle surface of the Rivers’ marriage begins to crack and the girls’ close friendship suddenly becomes a lot more intense. What happens next is a secret that will eat away at Nora for the rest of her life, a secret that she can only begin to tell when there is nothing left to lose. 294pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.75


71982 ACROSS THE BLOOD-RED SKIES by Robert Radcliffe


Spring 1917 and the average survival time of a WWI Reconnaissance pilot is 18 hours. After weeks in the thick of it, George Duckwell, reluctant novice-hero of the Royal Flying Corps is living on borrowed time, watching in horror as a succession of comrades are shut down, burned, maimed and killed. Somehow he survives. Struggling to make sense of the conflict, George forms an awkward friendship with William ‘Mac’ MacBride, an enigmatic Canadian ace, waging his own private war against the legendary Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. But the fragile bond that keeps the two men alive comes under perilous threat on the eve of the most lethal conflict the modern world has known. 326pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £2.75


72010 UNDER AN ENGLISH HEAVEN by Robert Radcliffe


The story of an American bomber crew stationed in Suffolk in 1943 and the way their lives intertwine with those of English folk on the ground, their British hopes and counterparts. Radcliffe provides an authentic sense of how terrifying it must have been to be at the controls of a Flying Fortress over Nazi-occupied Germany in broad daylight before there was sufficient fighter protection. Humour and pathos are blended. 440pp in paperback.


£8.99 NOW £3


72011 UPON DARK WATERS by Robert Radcliffe


An epic drama set on New Year’s Eve 1942 in the North Atlantic, when a white flash on the starboard horizon heralds the impact of a German torpedo. For Michael Villiers, second officer on the HMS Daisy, it is just another chapter in an extraordinary life. The son of a British diplomat and a beautiful socialite, he was sent to the family ranch in the pampas of Uruguay to escape a cholera epidemic in Montevideo. There, Michael became inseparable from Maria, the daughter of the family retainers. Eight years later, when Michael is uprooted again to England, he has no doubt that he will return to her. But in 1939 as Michael arrives back in Montevideo, war is threatening and the British are exploiting his family connections. 439pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3


72064 RING FOR JEEVES


by P. G. Wodehouse Captain Biggar, big-game hunter and all-round tough guy, should make short work of the two bookies who have absconded with his winnings after a freak double made him a fortune. But on this occasion Honest Patch Perkins and his clerk are not as they seem. In fact they are the impoverished Bill Belfry, Ninth Earl of Rowcester and his temporary butler, Jeeves.


Bertie Wooster has gone away to a special school teaching the aristocracy to fend for itself ‘in case the social revolution sets in with even greater severity’. But Jeeves will prove just as resourceful without his young master, and brilliant brainwork may yet square the impossible circle for all concerned. 240pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


72680 WELL OF LOST


PLOTS by Jasper Fforde Fiction’s strong-arm woman Thursday Next takes a vacation in the Well of Lost Plots, assuming a minor role in Caversham Heights, a dreary crime thriller set in Reading. Once down the well, Thursday finds herself apprenticed to Miss Havisham, who is conducting a rage counselling session with the characters of Wuthering Heights.


The arrival of Heathcliff throws the group into disarray as he sneeringly parades his 77 triumphs in the Most Troubled Romantic Hero Awards. A fitting conclusion to a glorious literary smorgasbord. 375pp. $24.95 NOW £3


71995 LOOKING BACK by Jospehine Cox From the moment she learns of the stranger’s visit, Molly Tattersall is filled with a sense of fear. A short time later her mother disappears, leaving behind a letter in which she asks Molly to take care of her five brothers and sisters. Molly’s wayward father rejects his responsibilities, leaving her to make a choice between the young man she has given her heart to, and the family she adores and who now desperately depend on her. Just 18 years old, Molly is made to realise that however hard it may be, she must put the children’s happiness before her own. 436pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3


71993 JINNIE by Jospehine Cox Jinnie is a child from a one-night liaison between Louise Hunter’s husband Ben, and Louise’s sister, Susan. When Ben takes his own life and Susan deserts her newborn child, Louise puts aside her own heartache and adopts the little girl as her own. One day a letter arrives from Susan, saying she intends to get Jinnie back. There are others whose lives are badly affected by the tragedy of past events - Adam who witnessed his mother’s murder and his sister Hannah, inwardly traumatised by what she too saw that night. It seems Fate is already taking a hand. 440pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


72002 SOMEWHERE, SOMEDAY by Jospehine Cox


Barney would always love her, but he couldn’t stay, not while his wandering soul craved adventure. Although Kelly had always known he would leave, she could never have envisaged how his leaving would turn her whole world upside down. For one long, agonising moment, she watches the man she adores walk away. Kelly begins to look to the past. In the autumn of 1877, when she was just a girl, something happened which was so bad it had torn her family apart. Since then she had hidden her life away in an old shoe box, not daring to look and not wanting to remember. Now Kelly realises she must go back to where it all began. 437pp, paperback. £8.99 NOW £3


72007 THE WOMAN WHO LEFT by Jospehine Cox


Louise and Ben Hunter have a happy, loving marriage, marred only by their unfulfilled longing for a child. News of his father’s passing brings Ben’s lazy brother Jacob back on the scene in the mistaken belief that he stands to inherit Ronnie’s small fortune. Added to which he means to have his brother’s wife but Louise warns him off just as she did years before. When he realises Ben will inherit everything, Jacob is beside himself with rage and commits a terrible deed that threatens to destroy everything his the family holds dear. 437pp in paperback.


£8.99 NOW £3


71999 POPPY’S WAR by Lily Baxter In August 1939, 13 year old Poppy Brown is billeted at a grand country house, and received with cold indifference above stairs and gets little better treatment from the servants. Missing the family she left behind in London, she is devastated when she hears that they have been killed in the Blitz. As soon as she is able, she starts her training as a nurse. While the man she loves is fighting in the skies above Europe, Poppy battles to survive the day-to-day hardships and dangers of war. 433pp in paperback. £5.99 NOW £2.75


72134 DOGS AND THE WOLVES


by Irene Nemirovsky Ada grows up motherless in the Jewish pogroms of a Ukrainian city in the early years of the 20th century. In the same city, Harry Sinner, the cosseted son of a city financier, belongs to a very different world. Eventually in search of a brighter future, Ada moves to Paris and makes a living


painting scenes from the world she has left behind. Harry also comes to Paris to mingle in exclusive circles, until one day he buys two paintings which remind him of his past and the course of Ada’s life changes once more. A novel of a doomed love affair. 216pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3


SERIES BACK IN STOCK


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