8 Fiction FICTION


73136 NIGHT FALLS ON THE


CITY by Sarah Gainham The novel opens at the Burgtheater in Vienna in March 1938, on the eve of the Anschluss between Hitler’s Germany and Austria. From the first lines, we are plunged into the ancient city on the brink of Occupation. By the time the novel closes in May 1945 with the Russians entering Vienna, the guileless spirit of the opening pages


have been replaced by one of despair, hopelessness and weariness after seven years of betrayal, occupation, brutality and horror. It is a story about politics, love, passion for a person, for an idea, for faith. At the heart of the novel is Julia Homburg, a wealthy, strong-minded and celebrated actress and her husband Franz, a Socialist politician who is Jewish. When the SS invades, Franz must be concealed. With daring ingenuity, Julia conjures a hiding place. In the shadow of oppression, ancient hatreds resurface and the streets are full of spies and collaborators. An acclaimed bestseller when first published in 1967, this is a true lost classic here in welcome 622 page paperback reprint. £8.99 NOW £3.50


73421 APPLEWOOD by Claude Michelet


The best selling saga of one family in war-torn France, there seems to be no future at all for the Vialhes, their son Jacques a prisoner in Germany, Paul with the Free French in England, indomitable Berthe condemned to the horror of Auschwitz. But stubborn as the land of Limousin north of the Dordogne, the family whether this storm too, to emerge in a world


irrevocably altered. For if the war brings Paul the dream he was seeking, it leads him to tragedy in Algeria. If Jacques forges new love and a new career, he cannot forget what he has lost. And who, of the 60s generation, will care for the unrewarding land owned by the family farm? 456pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


73446 LITTLE VILLAGE


SCHOOL by Gervase Phinn In the style of James Herriot, and every bit as endearing, here is a Barton-in-the-Dale novel. Elisabeth Devine causes quite a stir on her arrival in the village. No one can understand why the head of a big inner city school would want to come to sleepy little Barton-in-the- Dale, to a primary with more problems than school dinners. And


that is not even counting the challenges the mysterious Elisabeth will herself face - a bitter former head teacher, a grumpy caretaker and a duplicitous Chair of governors, and then there is the gossip… after all, a woman who would wear red shoes with silver heels to an interview is obviously capable of anything! 392pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


73471 STEEP APPROACH


TO GARBADALE by Iain Banks


After years of exile, Alban Wopuld has been summoned back to his family’s Highland estate, Garbadale. The Wopuld clan are closing ranks. They have built their fortune on the board game Empire! which has now become a hugely successful computer game, but now the Americans want to buy them out.


As the family gathers for their Extraordinary General Meeting, old grudges, forbidden passions and dark secrets emerge. What drove Alban’s mother to take her own life? And is he over Sophie, his bewitching cousin and teenage love? What Banks serves up is both unanticipated and terrible. 390pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


72114 BOHEMIAN GIRL by Kenneth Cameron Denton, a writer with a reputation for involving himself in murder cases, is used to getting unconventional mail, but this particular letter gets his attention - a note from a young woman, Mary, saying she is in terrible danger and needs his help. The letter is months old and was discovered hidden behind a painting. But who is Mary? If she feared for her life, why did


she hide the note, and is she still in danger? The search for answers leads Denton into the shadowy world of London’s artistic society and before he learns the shocking truth about Mary, he must endure another hazardous journey into a dark and deadly obsession. Set in 1901, gritty London comes alive in a novel filled with rich period detail. 310pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


72356 SAINTS AND SINNERS by Edna O’Brien


One of our most favourite Canadian authors Alice Munro, the brilliant short story writer, said of this writer ‘Edna O’Brien writes the most beautiful, aching stories of any writer, anywhere.’ With her inimitable gift for grasping people’s contradictions and desires, here she introduces us to a new cast of restless, searching people, who whether in the Irish countryside, London or New York, remind us of our own humanity. The 11 short stories include those titled Shovel Kings, Inner Cowboy, My Two Mothers and Old Wounds. With characters like


an Irishman in North London recalling digging the streets for the apocryphal gold, now an outsider in England and Ireland. With a 16 page reading group guide, 242pp in paperback.


$13.99 NOW £6


72263 THE PRINCE AND THE PILGRIM: A Tale of Arthurian


Britain by Lady Mary Stewart Alexander, nephew of the murderous King March of Cornwall, seeks to avenge his father and sets out on a journey to Camelot in quest of justice. But events do not proceed according to plan, particularly when the young prince’s path leads him to the Dark Tower of the temptress and sorceress, Morgan


le Fay. She persuades Alexander to attempt a theft of the Holy Grail. Is Alice, in possession of a mysterious silver cup, holding the Grail itself? The two seekers must meet... The novel is a skilful reinterpretation of Arthurian legend. 343pp in paperback with fairly large print.


£7.99 NOW £4


72383 A PAINTED HOUSE by John Grisham September 1952. The cotton is almost ready in the fields of Arkansas. The harvest will soon begin. Luke Chandler is a seven year old who lives with his family in a small, unpainted house on rented land. In the next six weeks, the family and a hired band of hill people and Mexicans must bring in the cotton that is their livelihood and


the guarantee of their survival on the land. Soon heat, rain, fatigue, a killing and the unravelling of a family secret threaten to destroy the family’s hopes and transport Luke abruptly from innocence to experience. Regarded as Grisham’s best work, this is a lyrical, gritty and personal novel, at times reminiscent of Hemingway. 366pp in fairly large print. Paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


72943 CHORAL SOCIETY by Prue Leith


Post 40 and 50 there is much to play for as the celebrity chef turned novelist relates. Friendship, sex, shopping, singing - even love - life doesn’t end at 50. That’s what these three women who meet when they join a choir firmly believe, but that is about all they have in common. Lucy, a widowed food journalist, is obeying her bossy daughter who prescribes singing to


help her get over her grief. Joanna, the single and successful business woman is tackling her inability to sing a note and much-divorced Rebecca is unashamedly looking for another mate. The three women decide to combine their talents to transform a run-down hotel on the Cornish coast. Conflict is bound to result. An uplifting tribute to female friendship. 376pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3.50 72946 MIDSUMMER


MEETING by Elvi Rhodes It was an unexpected legacy which brought Petra to the close village community of Mindon. An imposing stone house in the middle of the village, left to her by an old friend of her mother’s, promises a very different way of life from her lonely and unsettled one in Yorkshire. She was immediately made welcome by the local residents, in particular by members of the village Amateur


Dramatic Society and presided over by the formidable Ursula, they had decided to put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Petra to her surprise and pleasure was put in charge of the scenery. Rivalries, squabbles, love affairs and seething resentments all threatened to scupper the production. But Petra has a mystery from the past that has begun to haunt her. 399pp in paperback with fairly large print.


£5.99 NOW £3


73084 IF THE DEAD RISE NOT by Philip Kerr


A richly satisfying mystery, this is a Bernie Gunther novel by the author of Field Gray and The Berlin Noir Trilogy. Set in 1934, Bernie Gunther, now a hotel detective, finds himself caught between warring factions of the Nazi apparatus as Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the US Olympic Committee, connive to


soft-pedal Nazi anti-Semitism before the 1936 Olympiad. 1954 - Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power. Castro is in prison and the American Mafia is gaining a stranglehold on Cuba’s exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, after being kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced with a relatively peaceful new life. But he discovers that he cannot truly outrun his past when he collides with an old lover, and a vicious killer, from his Berlin days. 347pp in paperback. Apologies for remainder mark. $15 NOW £4.50


73141 ROSWELL


CONSPIRACY by Boyd Morrison A thrilling race against time to discover what really happened at Roswell, this is a masterful thriller. 1947. 10 year old Fay Allen of Roswell New Mexico, witnesses the fiery crash of an extraordinary craft. More than 60 years later, army engineer Tyler Locke rescues Fay


from a pair of assassins. She says they were after a piece of wreckage she had obtained from the Roswell crash, and she claims to know secrets about the incident that have never previously been revealed. Tyler is initially sceptical, but after he is kidnapped by a mysterious band of mercenaries, he comes to believe that Roswell holds the key to his and his countrymen’s survival. A thought-provoking thriller, 496pp in paperback.


£6.99 NOW £3.50 73143 SALEM WITCH


SOCIETY by K. N. Shields For readers who love dark fairy tales, here is a twisting, terrifying thriller that is rich in history, mystery and witchcraft. It is Salem, New England, many dark nights ago. The most infamous witch hunt in history is about to begin. Hysteria will be rife. People will imagine themselves to be possessed by Satan. In


uncontrollable fear and hatred, neighbour will betray neighbour. The innocent will be imprisoned and, eventually, hanged. Years later, a young woman is found savagely murdered, her body arranged in the death pose of a witch. Someone, or something, is reviving the terror of the notorious Salem witch hunts. Only one man, a brilliant, eccentric loner with a dazzling mind and a fascination for the mysteries of witchcraft, can keep the evils of the past at bay. But has he got the strength to do it? Do not read this on your own. 486 petrifying paperback pages. £7.99 NOW £3.50


73158 WHO NEEDS MR


DARCY? by Jean Burnett Taking in London, Paris and Brighton, this adventure details the charming and somewhat dastardly exploits of the youngest Bennet sister from Pride and Prejudice. Meet Lydia, everyone’s favourite Austen anti-heroine. Mr Wickham turned out to be a disappointing husband in many ways, the most notable being his early demise on


the battlefields of Waterloo. So Lydia must make her fortune independently and with her natural ability to flirt uproariously on the dance floor and cheat seamlessly at the card table, she would swoon in the wake of a dashing highwayman, a corrupt banker and even an amorous Royal or two. But on the hunt for a marriage that will make her rich, there’s nothing that Lydia won’t turn her hand to. 405pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50


73314 NOVGOROD THE


GREAT: A Novel by Andrew Drummond It is August 1833. In the ancient City of a Thousand Saints, in an inn kept by a man whose antipathy to all his guests is matched only by his violent loathing of poets, a young widow and a prosperous merchant encounter each other by chance. During a night spent in each other’s company, filled with dawning hope,


revelation, unfortunate accidents and pickled eggs, several remarkable stories unfold. One is that of a pedestrian- traveller extraordinaire, deceased husband of Ksenia, and his infamous father, who spent his life defrauding governments and upsetting Napoleon. Another concerns the widowed Ksenia’s perilous 6,000 mile journey across Siberia. Yet another tells of the merchant Horatio, who reflects on love, slavery and arithmetic, not to mention carnivorous Colombian elephants and the questionable motives of travellers. Original and witty, as readers may have guessed! 381 paperback pages with map. £9.99 NOW £3.50


73394 VENETIA KELLY’S


TRAVELING SHOW: A Novel by Frank Delaney


Packed with intrigue, pathos and humour, this lyrical novel explores two of Ireland’s great national passions - theatre and politics. It is January 1932. While Ireland teems in the run-up to the most important national election in the Republic’s short history, Ben MacCarthy and his father, Harry, watch a


vagabond variety revue making a stop in the Irish country-side. After a two-hour kaleidoscope of low comedy, Shakespearean recitations, juggling and tumbling, Harry - mesmerised by Venetia Kelly, the troupe’s magnetic leading lady - makes the fateful decision to abandon his family and set off on the road with her. Ben’s mother exhorts him to find Harry and bring him back, thereby sending the boy on a Homeric voyage into manhood. Interweaving historical figures such as W. B. Yeats with a host of unforgettable fictional creations such as Blarney the truth-telling ventriloquist’s dummy, the story encompasses half the world as well as a tumultuous decade in Ireland. 427 pages. £16.99 NOW £4.50


73544 BULLFIGHTING by Roddy Doyle


By the author of The Commitments, Doyle has an expert ear for capturing the voices and hearts of his characters. Moving from classrooms to graveyards, local pubs to bullrings, these dazzling tales feature an array of men taking stock and reliving past glories. Each is concerned with loss in different ways - of their place in the world, of


their power, virility, health and ability to love. Sharply observed, funny and moving, here is a bittersweet series of takes on men in middle age, revealing a panorama of Ireland today. 214pp in Penguin paperback. $15 NOW £6


73654 LARRY’S PARTY by Carol Shields


The dinner party which brings the novel to a deliciously unexpected conclusion is one of the greatest set pieces of modern fiction. We get inside Larry’s mind in 1984 - ‘If Heather McPhail was soft and curved, Megsy Hicks was a hard, straight line. Megsy of the bold sexy sweaters and Cher-style hair, Megsy of the wide mobile lipglossed mouth in the middle of a


face that was all quick sketch lines and strong severity - and attached to a moving, undulating muscular woman’s body.’ In his daydreams she says ‘I’ve been waiting for this’ as if, with her glasses off, she didn’t notice what a drip he really was, as though she was oblivious to the honking embarrassment of being Larry Weller and what that might mean. In the ordered riotousness of Hampton Court’s maze, Larry Weller discovers the passion of his life. 339pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


73296 THE ROAD HOME by Rose Tremain


Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain to seek work. Behind him loom the figures of his dead wife, his beloved young daughter and his outrageous friend Rudi who lives largely for his battered Chevrolet. Ahead lies the strangeness of London which holds out the alluring possibility of friendship, sex, money and a new career and if he is lucky, a new sense of belonging. Deeply moving and bravely imaginative, this novel was the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction and is here in Vintage paperback with olive green cover and matching coloured page edges. 365pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


73655 LAST THING HE


WANTED by Joan Didion A well controlled, literary, hard- boiled thriller. It is 1984 and rumblings of the Iran-Contra Affair are just beginning to stir. Large quantities of lethal weaponry are reaching the Nicaraguan Contras without the official sanction of the US government, but with its complicit knowledge. Meanwhile, out-of-work journalist Elena McMahon watches as her evasive,


gruff father’s life slowly ebbs away. Rudderless, she feels compelled to understand him and resolves to do his bidding, to follow the action to Central America by escorting a shipment of anti-personnel mines to a remote jungle. What begins as an emotional journey soon becomes a cog in a much larger wheel, a powerful political machine of intrigue and violence, political opportunism and murky underworld dealings. 227pp in paperback reprint. £8.99 NOW £3.50


73663 PLAY IT AS IT LAYS by Joan Didion Somewhere out beyond


Hollywood, has-been actress Maria Wyeth’s life is going off the rails, but her permanent catatonic state leaves her a mere bystander to her own downward spiral. Observing he life with detachment, she epitomises a generation left lost and inert by too much freedom. The book is a blistering, brutally refreshing dissection of 1960s


American culture, a classic work of fiction, startling and poignant in its exploration of the battle between the self and society, and the pain of living versus the ease of merely existing. A brilliant chronicle of America’s cultural and political life, Didion writes with mordent lucidity. 213pp in paperback reprint of the 1970 original. £8.99 NOW £3.50


73033 THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE by Audrey Niffenegger


A big, reckless and utterly convincing novel, wonky, sexy and incredible. It is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who meet when Clare was six and Henry was 36, and were married when Clare was 22 and Henry 30. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers with a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. The couple’s struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable. 520pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3.50


62717 THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford


The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of 20th century fiction, an inspiration for many later, distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. Set before the First World War, it tells the tale of two wealthy and sophisticated couples, one English, one American, as they travel, socialise, and take the waters in the spa towns of Europe . They are ‘playing the game’ in style. That game has begun to unravel, however, and with compelling attention to the comic, as well as the tragic results, the American narrator reveals his growing awareness of the sexual intrigues and emotional betrayals that lie behind its façade. Paperback, 192pp. ONLY £2


71369 MISS PURDY’S CLASS by Annie Murray Set in New Year of 1936. Gwen Purdy aged 21 leaves her home to become a school teacher in a poor area of Birmingham. Her early weeks are an eye opener. At school, she faces a class of 52 children, some of whose homes are among Birmingham’s very poorest. One of the teachers, the elderly Lily Drysdale proves an inspiration, and Gwen begins to understand the appalling hardships endured by the children. Joey Phillips, eight years old and man of the house, looks after his dying mother and lives in fear of being sent to the orphanage. When he disappears one day to a life on the streets, Gwen is haunted by his absence. 553pp, paperback. £6.99 NOW £2.50


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