Literature

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele RobertsJean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester. Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her.

Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece. Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith

“It is a difficult thing to write simply and eloquently with quiet and intense passion in ways that are unflinchingly personal but also fold the reader into the depths of history and myth. This is partly what Adrianne Kalfopoulou’s poems do for me. They are also celebrations reminding me how words can perform acts of affirmation and joy no matter what griefs or complex experiences they contain. These poems attain the beauty of ritual.”

Longlisted for The Millions Best Translated Book Awards for FictionLonglisted for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureFour siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When a dispute over her parents' will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favouritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different-a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured. Will and Testament is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman's struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth's novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.

A children's classic comes to life in an enchanting dramatization narratedby Alan Bennett. Enter the world of the great river and meet the marvelousriverbank animals: the poetic Rat, his friend Mole, and the boastful Toad, asthey voyage down the river and into the Wild Wood to great adventures! Thisexclusive BBC production features a full cast, authentic sound effects andsweeping music to warm hearts young and old.

"Winter Love is startlingly good: an intense, compelling story of illicit desire and heartbreak that’s also a fabulous evocation of worn-out wartime life. A blistering, unsettling, darkly romantic read." - SARAH WATERS “This short and intense shock of a book transports us to the dark streets of wartime London to experience the pleasures and pains of forbidden love” - CATHY RENTZENBRINKFrom the moment Red encounters her charismatic new college classmate, Mara, she is drawn in. Recently-married Mara is stylish and colourful and has a glamorous ease that lights up wintry Blitz-ridden London. Their friendship soon becomes an illicit but exhilarating affair exploring the enticing obsessive power, and long agonising hold, of love. First published in 1962, Winter Love is an explosive unpredictable love story told in exquisite, intimate prose.

Elfrida Phipps loves her new life in her pretty Hampshire village. She has a tiny cottage, her faithful dog Horace and the friendship of the neighbouring Blundells - particularly Oscar - to ensure that her days include companionship as well as independence. But an unforeseen tragedy upsets Elfrida's tranquillity: Oscar's wife and daughter are killed in a terrible car crash and he finds himself homeless when his stepchildren claim their dead mother's inheritance.

Oscar and Elfrida take refuge in a rambling house in Scotland which becomes a magnet for various waifs and strays who converge upon it, including an unhappy teenage girl. It could be a recipe for disaster. But somehow the Christmas season weaves its magical spell and for Elfrida and Oscar, in the evening of their lives, the winter solstice brings love and solace.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize The first book in Hilary Mantel's award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, with a new cover design to celebrate the publication of the much anticipated The Mirror and the Light From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel. 'Every bit as good as they said it was' Observer 'Terrific' Margaret Atwood 'As soon as I opened this book I was gripped. I read it almost non-stop' The Times In Wolf Hall, one of our very best writers brings the opulent, brutal world of the Tudors to bloody, glittering life.

We are sad creatures. I am a prostitute running to seed and my last asset is an idiot son. I am a street-sweeper collapsing under the weight of time and my own obesity. I am a foul-mouthed and repellent daughter desperately in need of a man. Sad creatures. Simple needs. Mr. Dimitriou conjures us into existence in the space of a few lines, and we live, poised between hope and its extinction, for a few brief pages in the harsh world of his pared down prose. Sad creatures, dumb creatures: our spokesman ultimately is a dead or dying dog... woof, woof, dear Lord.