International Velvet

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Nick Laird

From a rising British novelist, an artful meditation on love and life in contemporary LondonWhen David Pinner introduces his former teacher, the American artist Ruth Marks, to his friend and flatmate James Glover, he unwittingly sets in place a love triangle loaded with tension, guilt, and heartbreak. As David plays reluctant witness (and more) to James and Ruth's escalating love affair, he must come to terms with his own blighted emotional life. Set in the London art scene awash with new money and intellectual pretension, in the sleek galleries and posh restaurants of a Britannia resurgent with cultural and economic power, Nick Laird's insightful and drolly satirical novel vividly portrays three people whose world gradually fractures along the ineluctable fault lines of desire, truth, deceit, and jealousy. With wit, compassion, and acuity, Laird explores the very nature of contemporary romance—"The Death of Love in Modern Culture," as David puts it in one of his...

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Bernice Rubens

Bernice Rubens is one of England's elder stateswomen of literature, and I,Dreyfus upholds her reputation for producing stately and polished fiction with a serious moral intent. For Rubens, the anti-semitism which rocked France at the turn of the last century has not gone away. This time it crops up in 1990s England. Sir Alfred Dreyfus is the headmaster of a Church of England school. His only sin has been one of omission--he has concealed his Jewish origins to further his career. However, the novel opens with Sir Alfred imprisoned for a crime far more heinous. Literary agent and fellow Jew Sam Temple (names are emblematic for Rubens, and Temple does indeed prove to be an emotional haven for Dreyfus) visits the prisoner in his cell and persuades him to write a memoir of his downfall. The resulting narrative reveals a man coming to terms with his religious identity, and reclaiming his family's past. It is a deeply felt account of spiritual renewal, and should be read as an expertly crafted parable. Fans of psychological realism may balk at the evil anti-Semites she pits against her hero, but will rally at the sly humour of her ending. --Lilian Pizzichini

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Jude Morgan

Sir Clement Carnell was the most domineering and strait-laced of fathers, and his death has left his children, Louisa and Valentine, with a sense of release and anticipation. While Valentine throws open the Devonshire estate of Pennacombe to their fashionable cousins from London, Louisa feels free at last to reject the man her father chose as her prospective husband - Pearce Lynley. Soon the temptations of Regency London beckon - including Lady Harriet Eversholt, beautiful and very married, with whom Valentine becomes dangerously involved. Meanwhile Louisa finds that freedom of choice is as daunting as it is exciting ...

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Peter Lovesey

"Battle and burial are built into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no great shock when part of a skeleton is unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse found close to the folly known as Beckford's Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of the most puzzling cases he has investigated, involving golf, horseracing, Civil War re-enactment and the Cyrillic alphabet. Inevitably, Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member. She resolves to sideline Diamond by sending him to Bristol and handing the skeleton investigation to his deputy, Keith Halliwell. Fortunately matters don't pan out as Georgina plans."--Jacket.