Juliet Stevenson

On a dark midwinter's night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, a wounded stranger carries in the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later the girl stirs, and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Magic? As the days pass the child remains mute and unable to answer questions. Three families are keen to claim her: the wealthy mother of a kidnapped daughter missing for two years; a farming family sure it is their son's secret daughter; a parson's housekeeper,...

"Natalie Jenner, the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, returns with a compelling and heartwarming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world in Bloomsbury Girls. Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare book store that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable fifty-one...

"Ten years on from her last novel, Edna O'Brien reminds us why she is thought to be one of the great Irish writers of this and any generation. When a wanted war criminal from the Balkans, masquerading as a faith healer, settles in a small west coast Irish village, the community are in thrall. One woman, Fidelma McBride, falls under his spell and in this astonishing novel, Edna O'Brien charts the consequences of that fatal attraction. The Little Red...

From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra: spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling, and her children ... In House of Names, Colm Tóibín brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra's thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He...

"Jane Start is thirty-three, broke, and recently single. Ten years prior, she had a hit song--written by world-famous superstar Jonesy--but Jane hasn't had a breakout since. Now she's living out of four garbage bags at her parents' house, reduced to performing to Karaoke tracks in Las Vegas. But when her longtime manager Pippa sends Jane to London to regroup, she's seated next to an intriguing stranger on the flight--the other Tom Hardy, an elegantly...

Emma Woodhouse is a young woman who, having engineered the marriage of her companion, turns her attention toward making a match for the local vicar and her new protegée, Harriet Smith. Her one voice of reason and restraint is Mr. Knightley, who has known her since she was a child and who watches her behaviour with wry amusement and sometimes with real anger. Emma presides over the small provincial world of Highbury with enthusiasm, but she will find...

In the picturesque English region of Wildemarsh, Detective Matilda Stone investigates crimes with the aid or, often, meddling of her three mystery-writing aunts, who raised her from childhood. Together, they look into a murder at a health spa, a killing in the contemporary art world, and the theft of an Edgar Allen Poe manuscript. Matilda has decidedly less success with her personal affairs, continuing to pine for Dr. Daniel Lynch even as she begins...

Why is it that men, and not women, have always had power, wealth, and fame? Woolf cites the two keys to freedom: fixed income and one's own room. Foreword by Mary Gordon.

The Golden Bowl comes in the first years of the 20th-century: the publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons, decided never to serialise it and published it in New York in December 1904 in two volumes. After just a few months, in February 1905, also Methuen published the novel in London in a one-volume edition. In 1909, a revised edition appeared as volumes 23 and 24 of the New York edition, and James this time also prepared the preface, in which he reflected...

The Spoils of Poynton is a novel by Henry James, first published under the title The Old Things as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1896 and then as a book in 1897. This novel traces the shifting relations among three human beings and a magnificent collection of art, decorative arts, and furniture arrayed like jewels in a country house called Poynton. Mrs. Gereth, a widow of impeccable taste and iron will, formed the collection over decades only...