Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms - as something like two great waddling shillings. But this, she thought, was what it really meant to have paying guests: this odd, unintimate proximity, this rather peeled-back moment, where the only thing between herself and a naked Mrs Barber was a few feet of kitchen and a thin scullery door. An image sprang into her head: that round flesh, crimsoning in the heat.

'Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.' A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Book of the Year, 2007.
Shortlisted for Audible's Listen of the Year, 2006.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2006.
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2006.
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941...

London 1862: Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves - fingersmiths - under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her 'family'. But from the moment she draws breath, Sue's fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.

In a dusty postwar summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?

Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when an alluring woman in her 30s walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. She is an awkward 19-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realises how much they both stand to lose....

Captain Sabine Fleischer is a skilled and dedicated US Army surgeon deployed to a combat hospital in Afghanistan. She is also one of the thousands of troops who are forced to serve in silence because of the military's anti-gay policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT)". Usually driven and focused, Sabine finds that battles raging both inside and outside are making it more and more difficult for her to deal with her emotions. Dealing with loss and mortality, lack of privacy, sleep deprivation, loneliness, and the isolation forced on her by Don't Ask, Don't Tell are all taking their toll.

For solitary novelist Jorie Price, true love seems as fictional as the shape-shifting creatures she writes about in her paranormal romances. Griffin Westmore doesn't believe in love, either, but she's one of those not-so-fictional shape-shifters who secretly live among humans. When Jorie's writing gets uncomfortably close to the truth, Griffin is sent to investigate and, if necessary, kill the author to protect the secrets of her kind. But when Griffin unexpectedly finds herself drawn to Jorie, her world is turned upside down.

Anne Lister was remarkable. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist and a prolific diarist whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife. 

A Daphne du Maurier-esque chiller set on the mysterious Cornish coast from the author of The Silent Companions and The Corset. Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft’s family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home.

When Esther Thorel, the wife of a Huguenot silk weaver, rescues Sara Kemp from a brothel she thinks she is doing God's will. Sara is not convinced being a maid is better than being a whore, but the chance to escape her grasping madam is too good to refuse. Inside the Thorels' tall house in Spitalfields, where the strange cadence of the looms fills the attic, the two women forge an uneasy relationship. 

Stockbroker Isabelle Rhodes has a lot of money, a lot of trust issues, and a whole lot of reasons to believe her ex-girlfriend was right when she said that Isabelle sucked at relationships. With that accusation stuck in her head, Isabelle throws caution to the wind and dives into her first one-night stand. Checking that off her bucket list should be something to celebrate - except it turns out that the woman she just spent an earth-shattering night with is actually her newly hired company pilot, Audrey Graham. Ms. Never-See-You-Again just turned into Ms. See-You-Constantly.

England, 1917. Reeling from the death of her fiancé, Stella Marcham welcomes the opportunity to stay with her pregnant sister, Madeleine, at her imposing country mansion, Greyswick - but she arrives to discover a house of unease and her sister gripped by fear and suspicion. Before long, strange incidents begin to trouble Stella - sobbing in the night, little footsteps on the stairs - and as events escalate, she finds herself drawn to the tragic history of the house.

Sara Michaels is the daughter of a prominent senator who has just announced his candidacy for President of the United States - the same senator who has been receiving death threats against his family. Sara Michaels is also the owner of a self-help clinic and is hell-bent - despite the FBI's warnings - on leading a group of 10 women on a two-week sojourn through the Rocky Mountains. In an effort to protect Sara, the FBI recruits homicide detective Jaime Hutchinson to infiltrate the group and secretly provide the protection they are so certain Sara will need. 

Half a million dollars will be Celeste Thorne’s reward for spending four years of her life in total isolation. No faces. No voices. No way to leave. Since Celeste has never really worried about being alone, the generous paycheck she’ll receive for her participation in the solitary psychological experiment seems like easy money. When she finds an injured hiker in the woods bordering her living compound, her strictly governed world is thrown into disarray.