The Swimming-Pool Library

James Meek

An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People's Act of Love Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police. He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a m...

Daniel Kehlmann

'Supple, horrifying and mordantly droll' New York Times 'Nothing short of brilliant' Wall Street Journal 'A subtle, often darkly funny novel about the relationship between art and power' Sunday Times 'A dazzling performance and a real page turner' Salman Rushdie From 'one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today' (Jeffrey Eugenides), a visionary tale ins...

Douglas Stuart

The stunning new novel from the Booker Prize-winning, Sunday Times-bestselling author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo.'John of John has the emotional range and sense of sympathy of his earlier books, but this book is special, it has an urgency, an immediacy, a brilliant sense of place, the drama of fierce emotion repressed, concealed and volcanically exposed' - Colm Tóibín'To r...

Chloe Michelle Howarth

January 1965. The orphaned O'Leary siblings - Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy - arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tightlipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start. After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they're taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, compan...

Elizabeth Strout

FROM THE PULITZER-WINNING, BOOKER-SHORTLISTED ELIZABETH STROUT COMES A STUNNING STANDALONE NOVEL OF LOVE, LONELINESS AND NEW BEGINNINGS 'Emotionally stunning, devastatingly wise . . . her best novel yet' RACHEL JOYCE 'A moving, tender and wise novel about a committed teacher who is utterly confounded by the emotional complexities of daily life. This might be Elizabeth Strout'...

Wendy Erskine

AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVEL 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 'What a joy it is to read' Michael Magee, author of Close to Home 'I couldn't put this book down' Sheena Patel, author of I'm A Fan 'Powerful, moving, compelling, utterly enthralling' Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13 'A prodigiously t...

Alan Hollinghurst

A 'Book of the Year' for The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, Daily Express, The Spectator, The Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and the I Featured on Radio 4's 'Book at Bedtime' 'The best novel that's been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It's funny but desperately moving too' - The Sunday Times Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-w...

Alan Hollinghurst

Sunday Times Novel of the Year Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize A magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations. In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions ...

Alan Hollinghurst

Celebrating Fifty Years of Picador Books There was the soft glare of the flash - twice - three times - a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, 'Prime Minister, would you like to dance?' In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic...

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, luminous and wickedly funny portrait of modern England through the lens of one man's acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age.Dave Win is thirte...

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, luminous and wickedly funny portrait of modern England through the lens of one man's acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age. Dave Win is thir...

Alan Hollinghurst

"From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Man Booker Prize, a masterly new novel that spans seven transformative decades in England--from the 1940s to the present--as it plumbs the richly complex relationships of a remarkable family. In 1940, David Sparsholt arrives at Oxford to study engineering, though his sights are set on joining the Royal Air Force. Handsome, athle...