Vintage Publishing

When Klara appears in Paris, two months after the end of the war and years after her disappearance into Auschwitz, her best friend and sister-in-law, Angelika, is elated, if apprehensive. Initially, her fears seem well founded - Klara won't eat, nor will she acknowledge the daughter she has left behind.

WINNER OF THE WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN/ACKERLY PRIZE. Several months after the death of poet Dannie Abse's wife, Joan, in a car accident, he began to write a diary which is both a record of present grief and a portrait of a marriage that lasted more than fifty years.

Geoffrey Chaucer has some claim to being the greatest poet in the English language. Yet he has also been considered to be an invisible poet, self-depreciating and ironic, leaving only the breath of his comedy behind. In truth a great deal is known of him. He was a royal servant, who was indicted for rape.

In this quick-witted portrait, Ackroyd reveals something more: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances, just as Hitch did in his own films.

Tells the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and a trading empire, the wars against Napoleon and the tourist invasions of today.

On the eve of Angolan independence, Ludo bricks herself into her apartment, where she will remain for the next thirty years. She lives off vegetables and pigeons, burns her furniture and books to stay alive and keeps herself busy by writing her story on the walls of her home. Until one day she meets Sabalu, a young boy from the street.

Swimming in the clear blue waters of the Rainbow Hotel, Daniel Benchimol finds a waterproof camera, belonging to Moira, a Mozambican artist, famous for a series of photos depicting her own dreams - a woman he, Daniel, dreams about repeatedly.

A year has passed since Ari gave birth and still she can't locate herself in her altered universe. Sleep-deprived, lonely and unprepared, she struggles through the strange, disjointed rhythms of her days and nights. Her own mother long dead and her girlhood friendships faded, she is a woman in need.

But although they may be poor, life for the four March sisters is rich with colour, as they play games, put on wild theatricals, make new friends, argue, grapple with their vices, learn from their mistakes, nurse each other through sickness and disappointments, and get into all sorts of trouble.

As a girl, Clara del Valle can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, Rosa the Beautiful, Clara is mute for nine years.

Lionel Asbo - a very violent but not very successful criminal - has always looked out for his nephew, Desmond Pepperdine. He gives him fatherly advice and introduces him to the joys of Internet porn. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books, a girl to love and to steer clear Uncle Li's psychotic pitbulls, Joe and Jeff.

The narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life... all Samson has to do is to write it as it happens.