THE TIMES NOVEL OF THE YEAR A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2022 A GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BOOK OF THE YEAR 'It takes the most ferocious intelligence, skill, and a deep reservoir of sadness to write a novel as funny as this. I adored it' - Meg Mason, author of Sorrow & Bliss 'A devastating treat of a novel: funny, furious, dark and delicious' - Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious...

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique...

'An Experiment in Leisure' is a classic tale with a contemporary twist, told in an unforgettable voice that explores the emotional costs of social mobility, the possibilities of leaving and returning, the meanings of work and the ways a woman learns to love women. It's a witty, bold debut, at once a tender portrait of youth and a piercing insight into the political, cultural and economic fault lines dividing Britain today.

Norfolk, 1813. In the quiet Waveney Valley, the body of Mary Tyrell is staked through the heart after her death by suicide. She had been under arrest for the suspected murder of her newborn child. Mary leaves behind a young daughter, Hannah, who is later sent away to the Refuge for the Destitute in London, where she will be trained for a life of domestic service. It is at the Refuge that Hannah meets Annie Simpkins, a fellow resident, and together...

"As a state-of-the-city novel, it's richer than John Lanchester's Capital and less pleased with itself than Ian McEwan's Saturday." EVENING STANDARDHoward Pink is a wildly successful businessman still struggling to cope years after his nineteen-year-old daughter disappeared... Beatrice Kizza fled from persecution in Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal, and now works as a maid at a hotel... Esme Reade, an ambitious staff reporter on a Sunday tabloid,...

Molly Bolt is a young lady with a big character. Beautiful, funny and bright, she figures out at a young age that she will have to be tough to stay true to herself in 1950s America. In her relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends, in the rocky relationship with her mother and in her determination to pursue her career, she fights for her right to happiness. Proud and inspiring, Molly is a girl who refuses to be put in a box.

Marriages end with a whisper, not a bang. Not an argument, which is after all about passion, waves crashing on a shore, but with the small pockets of coldness that an argument creates. It's like islands. They don't sink like Atlantis. They wear away, little by little, until all you've got left is a single rock and a light. A warning to safer travellers to stay away. The last time Vee left the shores of Unity Island, she thought she'd left forever....

Iris flees New York City, and her abusive wife Claude, for the Catskill Mountains. When she was a child, Iris and her father found solace in the beauty and wilderness of the forest; now, years later, Iris has returned for time and space to clear her head, and to come to terms with the mistakes that have led her here. But what Iris doesn't expect in her journey of survival and self-discovery is to find herself - literally. Trapped in a neglected cabin...

22-year-old aspiring writer Edith 'Eddie' Miller and her best friend Rose have always done everything together-climbing trees, throwing grapes at boys, sneaking bottles of wine, practicing kissing . . . But following their debutante ball Rose is suddenly talking about marriage, and Eddie is horrified. When Eddie meets charming, renowned poet Nash Nicholson, he invites her to his crumbling Gothic estate in the countryside. The entourage of eccentric...

Although 'Melymbrosia' was written before 1912 and was the title of a much altered later book 'The Voyage Out', it wasn't until the 1980s that it first appeared. The edited version is more feminist and explicitly lesbian than 'The Voyage Out'.