Who Was Angela Zendalic? is set in Oxford, in the locality of Jericho and the world of University academia, encompassing the past and the present. A deeply moving and sensitive story told with skill, humour, and a mirror to profoundly changing times. In 1954, Peggy, a respectable war widow and librarian, gives birth out of wedlock to Angela, a ‘coloured’ baby, and due to the discrimination of society, and her own deep shame, must give up the baby for adoption. Angela is adopted by a loving and well-meaning white couple, and as she grows up must come to terms with racial prejudice, the confusion surrounding her circumstances, and of falling in love with a man fifteen years her senior. Sarah, Angela’s own daughter, grows up to be a feisty, liberated single parent who, on the death of her father, discovers her mother was a stranger called Angela Zendalic. Thus, she must confront her shock in order to search for her.

Calling All Authors Everything the author of fiction and non-fiction needs to know about the road to publication, understanding the book industry, and how to sell that book! Over the last five years, due to the advent of self-publishing and media marketing, publication is actually easier, but it's infinitely more difficult to get a mainstream contract. Thus, whatever method you aim for, you must have immaculate manuscript presentation, sound knowledge of the book industry, and dogged determination to make sales. Mary Cavanagh, a successful novelist and short story writer, has had first-hand experience of all publishing methods, the jungle of the book industry, and the many successful methods of making sales. In Calling All Authors she aims to demystify all the necessary processes in a concise, lively, and highly readable way, with some very useful contributions from a wide range of other successful authors. 'A fantastic book . . . a wealth of information and some brilliant advice for book types everywhere' The Big Green Bookshop, London N22 6BG 'An invaluable resource of information for all authors, even those who are, as yet, unpublished' Deborah Lawrenson, author

Joe Fortune, a Jewish GP, has been married to Anna, his Aryan beauty, for 20 years, in a relationship that is sustained with great passion and happiness. But in the shadows of their lives, dark secrets are hidden.

The Bodleian Murders is the third collection of short stories, all based around the university city of Oxford. These stories once again cover the range of emotional topics that are skilfully woven into the local landscape from murders motivated by ambition to romance and the countryside.

With this magnificently assured new novel, John McGahern reminds us why he has been called the Irish Chekhov, as he guides readers into a village in rural Ireland and deftly, compassionately traces its natural rhythms and the inner lives of its people. Here are the Ruttledges, who have forsaken the glitter of London to raise sheep and cattle, gentle Jamesie Murphy, whose appetite for gossip both charms and intimidates his neighbors, handsome John Quinn, perennially on the look-out for a new wife, and the town’s richest man, a gruff, self-made magnate known as “the Shah.” Following his characters through the course of a year, through lambing and haying seasons, market days and family visits, McGahern lays bare their passions and regrets, their uneasy relationship with the modern world, their ancient intimacy with death.

A “riveting historical page-turner” about a cellist caught up in the tumult and passions of early twentieth-century Spain (Booklist). A Library Journal Best Book of the Year I was almost born Happy . . . So begins The Spanish Bow and the remarkable history of Feliu Delargo, who just misses being “Feliz” by a misunderstanding at his birth—which he barely survives. The bequest of a cello bow sets Feliu on the course of becoming a musician, an unlikely destiny given his beginnings in a dusty village in Catalonia. When he is compelled to flee to anarchist Barcelona, his education in music, life, and politics begins. But it isn’t until he arrives at the court of the embattled monarchy in Madrid that passion enters the composition, thanks to Aviva, a virtuoso violinist with a haunted past. As Feliu embarks on affairs, friendships, and rivalries, forces propelling the world toward a catastrophic crescendo sweep Feliu along in their wake—in this haunting fugue of music, politics, and passion set against a half century of Spanish history, from the tail end of the nineteenth century through the Spanish Civil War and World War II, by the acclaimed author of Behave and Plum Rains. “Expertly woven throughout the book are cameo appearances by Pablo Picasso, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Bertolt Brecht, and others, but it is the fictional Feliu, Justo, and Aviva who will keep you mesmerized to the last page.” —The Christian Science Monitor “An impressive and richly atmospheric debut.” —The New York Times Book Review