The girl next door

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Nicola Barker

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Darkmans is an exhilarating, extraordinary examination of the ways in which history can play jokes on us all... If History is just a sick joke which keeps on repeating itself, then who exactly might be telling it, and why? Could it be John Scogin, Edward IV's infamous court jester, whose favorite pastime was to burn people alive - for a laugh? Or could it be Andrew Boarde, Henry VIII's physician, who kindly wrote John Scogin's biography? Or could it be a tiny Kurd called Gaffar whose days are blighted by an unspeakable terror of - uh - salad? Or a beautiful, bulimic harpy with ridiculously weak bones? Or a man who guards Beckley Woods with a Samurai sword and a pregnant terrier?Darkmans is a very modern book, set in Ashford [a ridiculously modern town], about two very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It's also a book about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. And the main character? The past, which creeps up on the present and whispers something quite dark - quite unspeakable - into its ear.The third of Nicola Barker's narratives of the Thames Gateway, Darkmans is an epic novel of startling originality.

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Michael Redhill

From the award-winning author of "Martin Sloane" and "Fidelity" comes a riveting story of two families in different centuries--one searching for the past, the other creating a record of it.

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Anne Tyler

Noah's Compass is a celebrated work by Anne Tyler (Pulitzer Prize Winner), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.

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James Kelman

"The novel is set in an unnamed territory or country that appears to be under military rule. It is narrated in the first person, but the narrators remain anonymous, as do most of the other characters. The language used is an atypical English form, but akin to the basic translation that might appear within a department of an overseas 'foreign office'. Perhaps someone transcribed first-hand accounts of certain incidents, events and states of mind, as narrated by participants in the struggle and then passed on the transcriptions for translation; or perhaps the accounts were simply translated first hand into English and edited later. In either case the results were dispatched to a more senior civil servant who later handed them over to an appropriate state agency."--Jacket.