Ellis is obsessed with the spiders that inhabit the crumbling house where he lives with his dad, his older sister and Great-Aunt Mafi - and by a need to find out more about his mother, whose death overshadows the family's otherwise happy existence. He is a sensitive soul - awkward and out of place most of the time but funny, too, and with an embarrassing habit of speaking his thoughts aloud, whatever the company.

When Audrey makes a devastating discovery about her husband, she is forced to re-examine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Their children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling secret, but for the meantime, they are trying to cope with their own dilemmas.

Tim Winton's first collection of stories deals with men, women and children whose lives are coming apart and whose hearts are breaking. These spare, jagged stories, in which people struggle with change and disintegration, are vintage Winton.

Italy in the early 1960s: A dying painter considers the sacrifices and losses that have made him an enigma, both to strangers and those closest to him. He begins his last life painting, using the same objects he has painted obsessively for his entire career - a small group of bottles. In Cumbria thirty years later, a landscape artist - and admirer of the Italian recluse - finds himself trapped in the extreme terrain that has made him famous.

When Kenneth Earl advertises for someone to help him catalogue his vast collection of music, Maggie - the final candidate - is his last hope. What he doesn’t know, however, is that this isn’t the first time that Maggie has been to Earl House, and it’s no coincidence that she applied for the job.

As Britain is pulled towards war, the secrets within two families threaten to tear them apart, in the new novel from Juliet West, The Faithful.... July 1935. In the village of Aldwick on the Sussex coast, 16-year-old Hazel faces a long, dull summer with just her self-centred mother, Francine, for company. But then Francine decamps to London with her lover, Charles; Oswald Mosley's blackshirts arrive in Aldwick; and Hazel's summer suddenly becomes more interesting.

Spanning four centuries, The Long Gaze Back features 22 new stories by some of the most talented Irish women writers working today. Taken together, the collected works of these writers reveal an enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a lively literary landscape. The anthology presents an inclusive and celebratory portrait of the high calibre of contemporary literature in Ireland. These stories run the gamut from heartbreaking to humorous, but each leaves a lasting impression. They chart the passions, obligations, trials and tribulations of a variety of vividly drawn characters with unflinching honesty and relentless compassion. These are stories to savour.

The fourteenth Adam Dalgliesh Mystery. When the notorious investigative journalist, Rhoda Gradwyn, booked into Mr Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset for the removal of a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar, she had every prospect of a successful operation by a distinguished surgeon, a week's peaceful convalescence in one of Dorset's most beautiful manor houses, and the beginning of a new life. She was never to leave Cheverell Manor alive.

Times change, and sometimes for the better.... As the 20th century draws to a close, Esme Reddaway knows that she must uncover the truth. A truth that began during the First World War when Devlin Reddaway fell passionately in love with Esme's elder sister, Camilla, and promised to rebuild his ancestral home, Rosindell, for her. But the war changes everything and Devlin returns to England to find that Camilla is engaged to someone else.

Peter Carey's brilliant, hilarious, Booker Prize-short-listed Illywhacker is the novel that first brought him to international attention. Herbert Badgery is vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch. He might very well be the embodiment of Australia's national character, especially in its fondness for tall stories and questionable history.

Constance, a musician, composer, and arranger of other people's music, has made a new life for herself in Bali. On hearing the news of her sister's serious illness, the last thing she wants is to leave her relaxed lifestyle and return to London.

Miranda Meadowe decides a lonely widowhood in her crumbling country house is not for her. Reviving a university dream, she invites five of her oldest friends to come and join her to live, and to stave off the prospect of old age. All have their own reasons for accepting.To begin with, omens are good. They laugh, dance, drink and behave badly, as they cling to the heritage they thought was theirs for ever: power, health, stability.

From the best-selling author of A Place Called Winter, Tree Surgery for Beginners is a funny, elegant and eclectic novel of love, lies and the secrets we live with. When Lawrence Frost wakes up one morning to discover his wife and child have gone missing, there is gruesome evidence to suggest he may be the main suspect in a murder investigation. Confused, threatened with the loss of everything he loves, Lawrence is sent to the Caribbean on a kill-or-cure cruise. 

The crying persisted. The door of the lighthouse clanged in the distance, and Tom's tall frame appeared on the gallery as he scanned the island with the binoculars. 'Izzy!' he yelled, 'a boat!' He vanished and re-emerged at ground level. 'It's a boat all right,' Tom declared. 'And – oh cripes! There's a bloke, but –' The figure was motionless, yet the cries still rang out. He hoisted out a woollen bundle: a woman's soft lavender cardigan wrapped around a tiny, screaming infant.

Judith shares her life with her partner, Joanna, on the lonely wilds of Bodmin Moor, far from the memories and trauma of her childhood. But when Judith's sister, Deborah, is tragically widowed, the women agree to meet. And what is intended to be a harmonious reunion turns into an entanglement of resentment, jealousy and desire, as aspects of the past force themselves into an uneasy present, with some surprising results.